Music (Part 2)

Since getting online some years back, music information has been growing steadily. I no longer need to rummage through endless racks of magazines hoping to find back issues of The Wire, Raygun and Alternative Press. Information I want regarding certain artists are just a few clicks away. And not only do I get articles and reviews, most of the time I can listen to samples of their tracks through streaming audio.

But that was at the dawn of the information superhighway. Now that bandwidths are getting "wider and wider", and internet service providers' price tags are dropping lower, not to mention the technology in audio and video encoding getting more competitive - music has become readily available to us, even those of the obscure kind. We are now at an information overload when it comes to music. For those of us who search deeper than your run-of-the-mill current pop sensation anyway. It's like being a kid in a toy store with a blank check clutched tightly in his hand. Music, esoteric or otherwise, was at my disposal.
But...as fun and exciting as that may sound, the drawback is that I no longer get that special gratification of buying a new cd. Of waiting for my favorite artists' new albums to reach our shores, if they ever did. The thrill of the hunt is almost entirely gone. And I miss that intimacy you get when listening to your favorite albums because now I have more music than I have time to listen, even though I have an iPod. For example, I haven't listened to Skinny Puppy's new album "Mythmaker" the way I ravaged "Rabies" more than a decade ago. I'm not as intimate with Miranda Sex Garden's "Carnival Of Souls" as I was with "Fairytales Of Slavery" (which seems to have it's every chilling note engraved inside of me). And the thrill of discovering the music of John Cage was not as ecstatic as my discovery of Black Tape For A Blue Girl. It just wasn't the same anymore.
Yes, I download music, and I'm not too proud to admit that. But what do you think will a drug addict sitting in front of free crack do? Ask where he could buy it? I think not. Is there guilt with every download? Yes, but it also comes with insatiable lust for new music.

Art & Commerce

As stated in my profile I am slaving away in the field of advertising. It's a good day job really. You get to meet all sorts of people, work on different projects each day, not very monotonous. Once in a while you encounter very interesting and talented individuals who have honed their crafts down to a science. They know what they want and know how to talk their way into getting it (spit for bucks is what i like to call it). You work with a producer like that and you're bound to get the job done in no time. No hassle for you and everyone else involved - from the clients down to the errand boys. These are producers and creatives who have worked in this field so long that they no longer try to deceive themselves that what they are doing is art. I mean, let's face it, there is no art in doing ads for fabric softeners and telephone companies. Doing t.v. and radio ads for insurance companies - how much more commercial can you get?

And then there are the noobs. These are advertising creatives fresh from college who come to the studio dressed like they just came straight to work after jamming with My Chemical Romance or emo-whoever. They walk around all hotshot and big-time...I've seen more than my fair share of their kind. I can see them a mile away. I've worked with them, and know how to work my way around them. They sit around talking about artsy-fartsy stuff...who died and made you film critics anyway? (c'mon,we're doing tomato sauce commercials here, not exactly painting the Sistine Chapel). Dissecting Hollywood blockbusters looking for morals and metaphors...please! They saw Amelie once and suddenly they're French film connoisseurs.

I really don't get it, how come they have the title of media/advertising creatives when the stuff they come up with are shite and uninspired - no semblance of a tiny drop of creativity whatsoever. Maybe it's just a term they coined for themselves.

Advertising is commerce, not art. So let's not kid ourselves. The sooner we accept that the better we'll do our jobs.

Music (Part 1)

Lately I have been thinking of how it was like being a music fan before the age of the internet. I mean, music information then was hard to come by, and most of it were crap. But I read 'em sometimes anyway, just because there was nothing else. During those days I never came across articles about Einstuerzende Neubauten or Ryuichi Sakamoto...it was more like New Kids On The Block (damn!) or something. Back then if you wanted to learn something new, to "experiment" if you will, you really had to dig deep. Plus you gotta be prepared to gamble that lunch money of yours...buying albums of artists you've never heard, just because their names and album titles, and artworks for that matter, attracted you. That's how I discovered bands like The Nymphs, Nirvana (hard to believe they were unknown then), Miranda Sex Garden, etc...plus a lot of "bad buys". But even before then, while still in elementary school, I was really drawn towards vinyl covers of those hairspray bands like Quiet Riot, Twisted Sister, Motley Crue, Kiss, Alice Cooper. Then in High School I thought how cool it would be to have hair like Ian McCulloch, Robert Smith and Richard Butler. They looked so badass and dangerous and different. I wanted to be a part of that.

Then even before the internet, back issues of magazines like The Wire, Raygun and Hypno strangely came pouring into Philippine shores, odd as that may sound like. There, in those pages my hunger for stranger things became more intense. I'd pass my days staring at whole page ads of Bill Laswell, William Orbit, Front 242, Projekt Records, 4AD, Cleopatra, Wax Trax, e:mit...and the list goes on and on. I mean, who are these people? What kind of demented mind would name their album "Ege Bamyasi" or call their band Cabaret Voltaire? Words of wisdom from people like JG Thirlwell, Pete Namlook, FM Einheit and others glared before my lustful eyes, straight from the lips of the artists themselves. I started realizing their visions, wanting to be part of that movement, if ever there was such a thing. And I've never even heard of their music.
Then one by one their albums started creeping into "specialty shops" in Manila. And one by one my "glam" collections started making space for Skinny Puppy, Nine Inch Nails, Nitzer Ebb, Future Sound Of London, Aphex Twin, Autechre...I was on drugs...better than drugs. Finally, I get to hear their music. It was like the first meeting with someone you've been in correspondence with for so many years. And the music failed to disappoint. I was in heaven...and I was never coming back down.

A Hard Day's Night

It's been a tough day at work today. I was the only sound engineer present so naturally I got tangled up in projects up to my neck, doing everything from tv to radio ads the whole day and then band recording for the night. Got home at 2am from working like a horse so the last thing I want to do is sleep. I just want to spend some time at least doing something I like other than work. So here I am now writing about it on my journal. Don't think I'm going to last very long though...I feel the weight on my eyelids getting heavier every minute.
Still, it felt nice coming home and finding at the dinner table a batch of freshly-baked choco chip cookies that my lovely wife made. Nothing like sitting on the kitchen counter with cookies and milk late at night.

Attrition Covers

I was finally able to record Kaz's vocals for my cover of Attrition's "This Great Design" and "Lip Sync" last night. I did some basic editing and mixing earlier today but had to cut my work short because we left the office early due to an expected storm (which didn't happen). As of now the tracks sound good but I'm not done with them yet. Hope I can find some time to continue working with it tomorrow.

Bagetsafonik Album Launch

Let this be my first official post.

August 5, 2007, 1 a.m. was a night drenched in bleeps and feedback courtesy of shoegaze-electronica group Bagetsafonik. Not to mention a night drenched in sweat courtesy of a hot August night. But heat or no heat there is no stopping the crowd...and the band. The bagets played better than ever.
This is the night of the album launch of Bagetsafonik's first CD entitled "Travelogue". The culmination of two years hard work, 3 changes in album producer and endless brainstormings. But all that paid off dearly as the album is the best I've heard in the Philippine music scene in a long time. I should know as I have been involved as recording and mixing engineer in the production of the album from the first recording session to the final mixes of every song (except the two remixes included). I could swear the sighs of relief from everyone was about as loud as the amps at Guijo that night.
Congrats Bagets.