The Soundtrack

Ten songs about one bad night on the road

One island, one tired car, one COE expiring at midnight. Ten songs written around that night, from the anthem to the quiet one at the end that means it.

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Illustration of a yellow taxi parked under a radio mast at sunset, rings of broadcast signal spreading across the sky

These are songs about the game, not the music in it. While you drive, the game plays its own score live (the Making Of page explains how). We wrote every word of these ten, and the recordings were made with an AI music generator on a paid commercial plan.

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Uncle Taxi FM: the game's own score, live

The game ships no music files at all. Its score is played note by note while you drive, by a sequencer in the game's own code, in one of three soundtracks you pick in Settings. Switch this radio on and the same code plays it here, live, in your browser: pick a soundtrack, then turn the dial from the main menu to the boss fight.

Neon Kopitiam: big-room festival EDM, supersaw drops. The one the game shipped with.
Guofeng Drift: half-time and moody, guzheng plucks.
Pasar Malam Rave: hardstyle night market, offbeat and loud.

The ten tracks

In the order they were written, which is roughly the order of the night.

Play

Siao Traffic

Eleven o'clock in Yishun, and one night left on a COE that expires at midnight. So he drives the whole island: the CTE, which is a carpark with a name, Orchard in a downpour, Newton smelling of satay, and sixty thousand people leaving Kallang at once. Signals, he explains, are decoration.

Play

Kena Again

Level nineteen, three seconds from the checkpoint, paint on the wall again. Two in the morning, cold coffee, phone at nine percent, and an auntie in the inbox has beaten the time by a hundred points. The gap was definitely there. The car simply declined. As the chorus says: I know how this ends and I still press R.

Play

Uncle Taxi FM

Twenty four hours of airtime and exactly one topic: your driving. The uncle takes calls, dedicates a number to the fella doing sixty in the middle lane with his hazards on, warns the PMD rider he will be on Stomp by morning, then goes soft for the one driver still signalling properly. Nobody else see you, but I see you.

Play

JB Run

Woodlands at eleven, the queue one long snake, three quarter tank or the officer makes you wait. Then the border clears: potholes the size of a decision, eight thousand ringgit if you feel like arguing with the system, banana cake sliding down the dashboard. Somewhere in the middle a car pulls level, and it has your face in it.

Play

Thread the Gap

Three instructions, shouted until they work: read the road, thread the gap, stay alive. Lorry left, bus right, do not brake, do not blink. Mostly this is the sound of a man declining, on principle, to lift off the accelerator.

Play

Leaderboard Kaki

Two people who will not let it go. A young driver sends a dare. An auntie replies that she has been driving this island since before he was born, that her streak is twelve days, and that she set his best time while holding her groceries. Then they run it back.

Play

Go Home Safe

Somebody has left the light above the door on for you. This is the one that says the quiet part out loud: in the game you can crash twenty times and start again, but out here there is no board, no coin and no second try. Just a table set for you, and someone keeping time.

Play

Kopi O Kosong

Six forty-five, the kettle already screaming, and uncle's station is on the air. Somewhere in the middle he stops the music to point out that a signal is free, that the gap in front of you is not storage space, and that the lorry cannot see you if you cannot see his mirror. The one that happens in daylight.

Play

In Your Pocket

It used to be a tab you left open at your desk. Now the same twenty eight nights ride around in your jacket, and the queue for the kopi is eleven people deep, which is about three levels. A song about a game small enough to carry and free enough not to think about.

Play

Steady Lah

Not the fastest on the road and never claimed to be. Read it, leave the gap, and everybody gets home. The closing track, for the same reason the uncle uses the phrase: steady lah is a compliment, an acknowledgement and a goodbye at the same time.

The rules every one of them follows

Everybody who sings is somebody in the game: the taxi uncle, DEXTER, the Karang Guni King, the Road Bully, Abang Rocket. Hear them all on the cast page.
The money is the money of the place: dollars in Singapore, ringgit over the Causeway, as in chapter three.
No statistic ever goes in a lyric. A number sung in a chorus cannot cite a source, so the real figures stay on the road safety page.
Every track carries the road safety beat, usually as the last verse. A game about driving terribly that never says get home safe is the wrong advert for itself.

Where they turn up

Siao Traffic scores the launch trailer, and several of the others play under the short vertical cuts on the channel, next to the films. They are free to listen to, and they always will be.

The playlist on YouTube Get the Android app