Confession: that cover was a bluff (for a good reason]

Okay, confession time. That image I showed you a few weeks ago as a first look at the Summer Breeze cover? Not the real cover. It was AI-generated, and I got away with it with a little grin because it actually served two very specific purposes, it wasn't just to mess with you.

First reason: to get you a bit hungry for more without giving anything concrete away yet. I wanted to hand you a small taste, a hint, something that would make you go "okay, so it's heading in this direction" without showing you the winning card too early. I like playing with anticipation a bit, I'll admit it, it's part of the fun of building an album and then watching it take shape piece by piece right in front of you.

Real Cover by Darkinside29

Second reason, and this is the real one: I needed it as a reference to hand to the illustrator working on the actual cover. Picture the scene for a second. Me trying to explain in words what I mean by "summery atmosphere, melancholic but bright, with that 80s nostalgic touch mixed with the Poetto vibe." I could have written three pages of description and still not gotten the point across. Instead, with that placeholder image in hand, the illustrator immediately understood the direction, the palette, the overall mood. It worked way better than I honestly expected.

And now that the real thing, hand drawn with a level of care an AI could never replicate, is finally ready and I showed it to you over the past few days, I can say it without holding back: that was just the dress rehearsal. A sketch, a starting point. What you saw is Summer Breeze for real this time, the one that's going to print, the one that stays.

And since I'm already here clearing the air on everything, might as well drop the official tracklist too, which I've kept carefully hidden until now. Fourteen tracks telling the story of a single summer day, a journey that starts under the high noon sun and ends among the neon lights of night, passing through beaches, memories, speed, promises made and maybe not kept, and starry skies:

1. Summer Joy

2. Surfin' Up

3. Kids of Fire

4. Poetto Beach

5. Summer Breeze

6. Waves of Tomorrow

7. New Horizons

8. Sleepless Night

9. Freedom Ride

10. Promises

11. Moonglow Sonata

12. Arcade by the Shore

13. Starfall Skies

14. Drifting in the Haze

    
    

Fourteen stops on a journey I've built note by note, month after month, locked away in my little studio imagining what this summer would sound like if it could be turned into music. The digital album drops August 3rd, so we're almost there now, and you'll be able to hear it in full the moment midnight hits that day. The physical edition, complete with booklet and full front and back cover, arrives a bit later, on September 15th, for anyone who loves having something tangible in their hands and not just streaming.

Pre-orders are already open on Ko-fi, and there's an extra reason not to miss them, whoever pre-orders the physical copy gets their name in the official album credits. A small signature hidden inside all the work that went into bringing Summer Breeze here.

Thanks for playing along with me these past months, for waiting, for making guesses about that placeholder cover, for still being here reading this. Now it's a straight road to August 3rd, and I honestly cannot wait for you to hear all of this.