Life's A Beeyatch!

Just a thought: considering how short life is (my 33 years seem to have gone by in a blink)you'd think it would go easy on us. But no...it has to make things hard for us. At the very least it could make a few "things" slide. Times like this I sometimes wish that I could be a woman for a while. Why a woman? I'm not a sexist pig. It's just because according to Kathy Bates in Misery, "...sometimes being a bitch is the only thing a woman can hang on to..." .Then, just maybe, I could out-bitch life. Like I said, just a thought.

A Few More Things (Nice Guys 2)

While on the subject of unfairness... I really hate it that I always get declined when applying for credit cards. It's not like I plan to go on a shopping spree every weekend or buy the snazziest gadget available and then not pay for them. But as head of the family it would be nice to have that piece of plastic in my wallet in case of dire need. I have a permanent job and I'm definitely not on the minimum to below minimum wage bracket. I have all the necessary requirements and yet somehow I manage to fail. Meanwhile, the janitors and technicians of companies like Citimotors or ABS-CBN are getting credit card offers left and right. It's this "top100 companies" policy that banks have nowadays. If you happen to work in a company that is in their top100 list then you're good to go. I mean not to look down upon people who work these jobs. They're probably hardworking and dedicated people. But c'mon man. And it really boils my blood every time they ask me if I already have a credit card with other banks, because they say it makes the application easier. Hey fucking Einsteins, if I already have a credit card then I wouldn't be talking to you.

And what's up with this gadget lust that people have now? I mean, I probably love gadgets just as much as the average guy and there are some that I would love to have. I have an old iPod which was like a gift, and I adore it to death. But given the chance I would like to have either the Creative Zen Vision for its features, or the 160Gig iPod, of course for it's capacity and cheaper price. I earn good money and I work hard for it but these things would forever elude me. But riding the shuttle to and from work everyday I see these people brandishing the latest in cellphones (two in most cases) and iPods. And I don't mean to be judgmental but I'm pretty sure some of them are blue collar workers and fresh graduates earning minimum salaries. And yet they have those that I cannot afford. Ok, so a 160Gig iPod is probably more than I need you say. But as a genuine lover of great music is it such a sin to want all my music by the palm of my hands every time. Yet the people who have those new iPods just load 1-2 Gigs of crappy Pinoy pop-rock and fuckin' rn'b shit (yes, I peek at other people's playlists) and the rest is used for downloaded porn and their collection of Philippine showbiz scandals. What a waste of technology and hd real estate.

And what need is there for high school students to have those Nokia N-whatever (they can't even pronounce it right)? They don't even use it for calling so what are the chances of them using the other features? And do you really need two...for texting? I'm sorry if I seem to be bitter but at least I'm not the one trying to compensate for something through gadgets. And no, the iPhone won't make your dick bigger.

Nice Guys Finish Last

I consider myself to be a good person. I try to stay out of trouble...don't do drugs...no bad police records...don't drink (much). I believe in God and I pray every now and then and not just your hurried morning and evening prayer. I wake up before sunrise, help the wife get our kid ready for school, go to work, then head on straight back home to my family every night. But just this afternoon, sitting alone at work contemplating, I got to thinking: last guys almost always do finish last. Let me discuss further and site some examples to support my newly adapted philosophy.

I was once in a bank to have a check encashed. After waiting for several minutes the teller calls my name to tell me that she could/would not proceed with the transaction unless I present her a second ID. Well, unfortunately I only had one. So there I was holding a check for a small amount of money that I could not use while hundreds of dirty politicians and drug lords transact their businesses at banks all over the country, withdrawing hundreds of thousands of blood money.

Many years ago while hanging out in a Burger Machine (hmmm, classic...)near our house at about 1:00 in the morning, a jeep passing by had a flat tire. Naturally I offered my help. After a few minutes of him (driver) bumbling around, it turns out the guy driving was piss drunk and started hitting his jeep with his wrench and started cursing me because I think he wanted me to do all the work for him. Naturally I left.

When I was still in junior high in a Catholic school, while waiting for our theology teacher (who was on her way to becoming a nun), the class started getting a little rowdy. People were running around, hanging outside the corridors, making paper planes to throw outside the window...well you know the scene. Some of my classmates started writing nasty, perverted stuff on the blackboard. Then when one of the guys spotted the teacher coming everyone panicked. And I, who was sitting front and center (therefore nearest the blackboard) got hold of the eraser and started cleaning the nasty scribbles. Next scene: teacher enters the room to find me the only person left standing, with my hand to the board no less. Teacher took the eraser from my hand and hits my head with it, chalk powder and all. Hey, I have dark brown, curly hair and those white chalk powder didn't come off easily with a simple shaking of the head. It was humiliating.

Fast-forward to now. I work as a sound engineer and I love my job. With all honesty I feel fortunate to have been blessed with it. Lots of great projects...fun people to hang around with...But once in a while you have an experience where you just go "WHAT THE FUCK!!!???" Let me site an example. Here's the scene: It's a friday night, almost seven, and after a hard day's work I finally shut down the computer and hang my bag around my shoulder. Suddenly the phone rings...

ME: Hello...
CLIENT: (in a dominatrix-like voice)Oh good, you're still there. I'll be back there around 8pm to work on something. I have new materials with me...blah,blah,blah...
ME: I was on my way home, but...ok.
ME: (texting my wife) Hi, sorry have to stay here at work...blahblahblah
WIFE: but you said you were on your way home...it's our anniversary and I baked something special...and who's going to eat all this rice...and our daughter needs help with her math...blahblahblah?
ME: I know, I'm sorry but client's breathing down my neck...blahblahblah

Then, at 10pm client is nowhere in sight. Around 10:30 the work materials arrive and still no client. Client calls again and tells me to go ahead and start working on the materials. 1-2am and I'm finally done working. My eyelids weigh like bricks, stomach's hungry as hell, and it feels like a moss garden grew on my tongue (gross, I know). I call to tell client I am done and just waiting. Client says: (voice drowned out by club music) "Oh good. But I won't make it back. Just leave the materials there and I'll have it picked up next monday."

This is the part where I shout:
WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW
TTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT
FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Endzeit Bunkertracks 3

Just received an email from Alfa-Matrix saying that after choosing from over 1000 songs, the tracks I submitted for the "Endzeit Bunkertracks ActIII" compilation won't make it to the final track list. It's a little sad but I do have the Attrition cover album to look forward to.
However, Alfa-Matrix was kind enough to send my tracks over to Cryonica Music in London who are currently preparing the next edition of their "Cryonica Tanz" sampler.
And according to Seba of Alfa-Matrix - "we never know".

Philippine Music Scene

Working as a sound engineer in a studio, I have had my share of band "exposures". Some of them come to the studio because of projects, some of them work in the studio. Still there are others that just, well, hang around. They just sit there "talking music" and deep inside you know that we are expected to swoon. Because they're rock gods/stars...whatever. That's all fine and dandy except for one tinny, tiny problem...they know nothing of what they talk about!
I don't mean to be an elitist and I am no music expert myself. I mean, I know a bit of Hendrix, Beatles, Mozart, Beethoven, Alice Cooper, Kiss, etc...but I am no connoisseur. That much I admit. But these rockstar wannabe's talk about Kraftwerk, Silver Apples, Lennon, Deerhoof, Miles Davis, Coltrane, etc...within earshot of we who are supposed to feel bliss and enlightenment to be at their presence...and their talk is nothing but...talk. Full of hot air, no substance whatsoever. They drop names like the Japanese Imperial Navy dropping bombs at Pearl Harbor. But they are all just for show. You could tell how shallow their tastes in music really are. One quick listen to these bands' albums should do the trick of showing their true musical colors. That is if you last the entire album, I'm betting that you would not. Unless of course your taste in music falls on the shallow side as well.
I mean, c'mon...if you like punk rock so much then why does you music sound like crap? And if you're so anti-image/anti-establishment, what are you doing in shampoo commercials? Give me a break. No, give us all a break actually.

...to be continued

Wrapped In The Guise Of My Friend

I have finally submitted the "raw tracks" of my cover of Attrition's 'This Great Design'. This is for the Attrition tribute album entitled "Wrapped In The Guise Of My Friend". It took a while but it's finally done and it was all worth the effort. I'm not sure yet whether I'm gonna make it to the final list but i sure hope i do. It would be a great honor.

Erratum

Bagetsafonik singer/guitarist Ace commented on my last post that they are actually MTV Rising Star for October and not Artist Of The Month as previously stated.

Artist Of The Month

Just got word from Bagetsafonik keyboard player Marcus that they are MTV's artist of the month next month. Quite a feat for an indie band from Manila I should say and they are very much deserving. They are one of the very few bands that restored my faith in the local "band" scene.

New Hope For Attrition Covers

Just when I was thinking that there was no hope for my Attrition covers, I received an email from Mr. Martin Bowes himself saying that he liked both covers that I did of his songs "Lip Sync" and "This Great Design". I think he was particularly more interested in my cover of "This Great Design" because it had more or less the same feel as the original according to him. It was truly an honor for me to have received good comments from 'the man' himself as I was afraid that I would not be able to do his songs justice.

Nothing is written in stone just yet though as there are still no official announcements as to who's going to make it to the Attrition cover compilation. I'm sure Mr. Bowes will go through tonnes of covers - many of which I'm sure will be coming from well-known and respected artists - before he can decide. I just feel honored enough that mine is being considered. But I do hope I make it to the final list of artists. Right now the only thing I can do I guess is hope and pray that I make the cut.

Halogen

Bagetsafonik has a new music video for "Halogen", one of my favorite tracks off their debut album "Travelogue". Catch it on (dare I say) mtv asia or check it out on YouTube.

Birthday

It's the eve of my birthday today, and a Friday at that. So I decided to stay up late and do some updates on my websites and profiles. Nothing fancy, just my band [Fluxu§yndrom]'s home page plus a couple of others.

Swallow

I think I'm done with my interpretation of "Swallow". I'm pretty sure that I'd be adding more to it in the next couple of weeks (or take out stuff, depends on my mood really). But as of now I'm giving it a few "rounds" on my player.

Kaziotone

I have been working on a track called "Swallow" for beat poet Kaz's album tentatively titled "Kaziotone". It features Kaz's poems interpreted mostly by electronic artists from Manila such as squid9, silverfilter and what is probably one of the last tracks ever worked on by wolfmann.

Unlike my previous work covering Attrition's "Lip Sync" and "This Great Design" (featuring great performances by Kaz) which geared toward electro and darkwave, "Swallow" is more old school industrial with elements of musique concrete. This was unintentional and came to be as I pondered upon Kaz's lyrics. I think it works great - the music reflecting the words and the juxtaposition of Kaz's voice against the harsh, eerie music.

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.

Welcome

Just checking out Blogger. If everything goes well...then these pages will be filled with rants and random thoughts. I'm gonna pretend that someone is actually reading this and whore my other blog at http://www.freewebs.com/fluxussyndrom