Mar Emanuel releases vulnerable new album, recorded from his bedroom with fellow Asian Canadian artists
*Disclosure: Cold Tea Collective serves as the publicist for Mar Emanuel, who is the featured subject for this article.
Filipino Canadian singer-songwriter Mar Emanuel recently released his debut LP album, “Almost!”.
With a mix of alt-R&B tones and indie pop-rock beats, Mar’s signature sound is dreamy, understated, and unafraid of vulnerability. Think Frank Ocean and Daniel Caesar vibes.
Featuring 11 reflective songs about heartbreak, love, loss, identity, nostalgia and more, Mar Emanuel proudly celebrates his Filipino heritage as being central to his connection to music and his identity as an artist.
Cold Tea Collective speaks with Mar Emanuel upon the release of his album, “Almost!”
Mar Emanuel’s music sounds like home
“Almost!” showcases Mar’s talents from singing, songwriting, instrumentation, storytelling and producing. Blending smooth vocals with hypnotic R&B textures, this album is the result of Mar’s transformational life experiences over the last two years.
With layered production, raw lyrical honesty and sounds ranging from deep tones to light childlike play, the album showcases Mar’s ability to mix personal storytelling with genre-blurring sound.
The entire album was written, recorded and mastered in Mar’s home studio in Richmond, B.C., a suburb of Vancouver, where Mar relied on the sounds of his immediate environment.
“I wanted to focus on capturing the “sound” of my home studio with the album, so we included a number of tracks that brought out the character of the room: my brother’s dog barking, the sound of roofers working in the neighbourhood, a bass tracked with a fuzzy ¼” connection, and even recorded Alvin’s footsteps on the carpet to help keep the beat in the last section of the song.
Community and collaboration are central to Mar Emanuel’s creative process
In bringing his music to life, the Filipino Canadian singer-songwriter knew he wanted it to be a community project. “Almost!” features collaborations with other Asian Canadian vocalists Aaron Marcus and Kardias Quing, and guitarist Alvin Brendan.
During the songwriting process, Mar shares that he would block off weeks of work to focus on his songwriting, inviting into his home studio his favourite local musicians. “I made a conscious decision to collaborate more with musicians I respect and appreciate in my city for this project,” says Mar. “What was most important to me in creating this album was to be able to connect with my collaborators on a personal and emotional level to produce music I’m proud of.”
Visual storytelling in Mar Emanuel’s “Red Camry” music video
The first single released from the album was “Red Camry”. The accompanying music video was an ambitious project, where Mar called upon other local artists including Egyptian Canadian directors Abdo Megahid and Ali Heraize and starring Curtis Lum (“The Night Agent”) and Ricky He (“Worth the Wait”).
The story follows a young man dealing with family loss and estrangement, offering a layered visual counterpoint to the themes of nostalgia and transition. The dramatic visuals and dynamic storytelling paint a compelling picture of the growing pains Mar Emanuel endured over the last few years in this new reflective single and film.
“This one came from a place of reflection. It’s about confronting something you thought you were done with emotionally — and realizing it’s still sitting with you. Writing it was a way to let go of some of that.”
The music video for “Red Camry” also stars a predominantly Asian cast, including a Filipino nurse and mother character and two young Filipino boys, reflective of common lived experiences in the diaspora and specifically of Filipino family life. “I grew up around a lot of Filipino nurses, and I wanted to make this an Asian story—something true to the world I know,” shares the singer-songwriter.
Collaborating with other local filmmakers, Mar also released music videos for “Footsteps” and “Swallow The Pill” from the album, with a video for “Sabel” still to come after the album release.
Mar Emanuel’s music is an homage to his Filipino family and upbringing
Mar Emanuel’s approach to music is as layered as his storytelling. Raised in a Filipino household where Les Misérables soundtracks played on road trips and church choirs filled Sunday mornings, he gravitated toward music as a way to merge his love for writing and self-expression. “I grew up wanting to be a writer or journalist, and found that songwriting helped me scratch that itch,” he shares.
His song “Notes” is a whimsical and light sounding track, in contrast to many of the deeper tones throughout the album. In this song, he references his mother and depicts how he imagines her in her youth.
“She would write little notes in my lunch for school, or when she stepped out of the house for the day. It’s a cursive chicken scratch, molded by the nuns and priests of her Catholic girls’ school in Manila,” shares Mar. “She told me that many graduates of her school have this particular handwriting too; a relic of their childhood, brought to life in every pen stroke. When I see her writing, I see the girl that only exists to me in cloudy, sepia-toned album photos. She was like me once, innocent and unknowing. I didn’t know her then, and I never will, but her little notes to me made me feel a little closer.”
See also: Reimagining nature documentaries with Filipino Canadian comedian Gordie Lucius
Growing up in a Filipino household as a music artist
Mar was born in Manila and immigrated to Canada as a young child – and according to his parents, he also was born with an ear for music.
“I was the youngest of them, so my parents didn’t really start with me until we had moved to Canada,” he shares. “My parents always said that I had “an ear for it”. Despite their pleas, I was always reluctant to perform for them or their friends.”
But like the rebellious youngest child he was, Mar didn’t feel connected to music until the pressure was off and he had the chance to explore it on his own, freely. “It was only after I had stopped with lessons, and they had stopped asking me to play for them that I began to venture into creating my own music, and finding my voice. I don’t think I liked being told what to do…even if they were right. Now I see the impact that sharing my music has had on people.”
See also: Foliage Filipino: Deepening a connection to Filipino culture through plants
Mar Emanuel found his voice making music in his college bedroom
The UBC alumnus produced his first EP, “Be”, in his bedroom when studying to complete his undergraduate degree in marketing. “I played with a few bands such as “Christ Alrighty” and “Malade”, and fell in love with the process of creating music,” shares Mar.
“With every release, I’m further encouraged by the reception of listeners around the world. Since then, I’ve seen my limits expand every day – opportunities to work with artists that inspire me, acquiring new skills, and gaining new perspectives on life that I can only articulate through music.”
Finding his own voice and his own sound meant also listening to a variety of other music and artists. From musical theatre to pop funk, indie rock, to R&B and hip hop, Mar found inspiration from artists such as Frank Ocean, Ryan Beatty, Allen Stone, Stevie Wonder and fellow Vancouver-based artist Dan Mangan.
With the “Almost!” album, Mar hopes to take that on tour, for which he promises a positive and engaging audience experience. “Performing a vocal is so important to me – it’s not just singing.”
He cites Frank Ocean and musical theatre greats such as Cynthia Erivo’s “I’m Here”, Jessie Mueller’s “She Used to Be Mine”, Jonathan Groff’s “You’ll Be Back” – and anything by legendary Filipina, Broadway and on-screen performer Lea Salonga, in Les Miserables as the vocal performances that inspire him.
Now that he’s released his own LP, when it comes to his own musical style, he still finds it tough to answer. Aiming to pair classic songwriting with modern textures, much of his sound is shaped from the space in which he creates in: his bedroom studio.
“There’s a homemade quality to my music that I’m simultaneously trying to enhance and hide. Creating [music] out of a more ‘amateur’ physical space allows me to be more honest, and more myself. At the same time, I’m conscious to not make the music sound amateur and having great musicians play great instruments definitely helps,” shares Mar.
“I definitely still have a lot to go in perfecting the art of the “song”, but the creation process is always guided by serving the “song”: what am I trying to say? How do I best communicate this? Most importantly, do I like it?”
Filipino Canadian music artist Mar Emanuel releases new album, “Almost!”
“There’s a vulnerability involved in creating and sharing music,” shares Mar. “I’m happy to admit that this project won’t be the best thing I’ll ever do – but it will certainly be the best thing I’ve ever done.”
Looking ahead to the future, Mar hopes to tour the songs and stories of Almost! and explore producing more music for himself and others. “Music pours out of me, so long as I live, I will continue to create.”
A rising voice in Canada’s independent alt-R&B sound, Mar Emanuel brings a distinctly diasporic lens to his music, weaving the influences of his Filipino heritage, west coast upbringing into every note.
Stream Mar Emanuel’s new album on Spotify and Apple Music and watch for his new music videos on YouTube and follow him on Instagram and TikTok.
*Disclosure: Cold Tea Collective serves as the publicist for Mar Emanuel, who is the featured subject for this article.
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