I borrowed a live concert DVD of one of my favorite ’80s pop-rock groups Talking Heads. The DVD titled Stop Making Sense inspired me to come up with a cover version of their 1985 hit song, “Burning Down The House,” except with software and big beautiful electropop beats.
Author: Acid42
Track: Acid42 + ARIEL – Emblues in Repose
It’s a relaxing downtempo instrumental — a collaboration between East and West coast-based Filipinos trying to figure out this country. The song is based on a riff and a series of patches proposed by Ariel and expounded on and sequenced by myself. The result is a light, flowing, driving song which is primarily in E-minor. Very west coast, if you ask me.
Track: Happyland
Here’s a morose introspection in A-minor, quickly escalating into frenzy. Influenced by musical acts: Air and Plone. This is the soundtrack of a cold, conflicting, melancholic Northern California. It is also the name of a real, honest-to-goodness street in the city I live in.
Track: Hymn of College Of Saint Benilde (electropop remix)
Presenting the Hymn of De La Salle -College of Saint Benilde, given an electropop/hiphop spin by yours truly (with a touch of neo-classical in the bridge). Of course you realize all these genre labels sound cool, but that I’m really just making those terms up, right? Hahahahaha!!!!
Track: Midnight Monologue
Inspired to write some gothic-sounding electronic rock because of last Friday’s goth gig at Cubao X, I came up with this anthemic tune in a matter of 3 hours using Reason software and channeling all my angst into it.
Gigging and Gothing About at Cubao-X
A full night of music and an Acid42 performance at the Cubao-X venue in Quezon City, Philippines: I actually tried something new tonight, and constructed a few on-the-spot loops for the event. Since the night was primarily a gathering of goths and goth-music lovers, I tried my hand at crafting some moody atmospheres on-the-fly. And some of it worked. When the rest of it was starting to suck, I had to start playing my pre-constructed slow songs. They were still a bit too hip-hoppish and funky for the goth crowd, I felt, but what the hey.
Track: Collaboration with Syke on “Pag-Ibig Na Makapangyarihan”
Collaboration with Filipino MC and rapper Syke. The ends result? A hip hop / world music track with doses of electronic yumminess.
Acid42 in Stuff Magazine: Aug 2005
So, a few months back, an editor friend emailed me asking if he could interview me via email for the cover story he was doing on Stuff Magazine Philippines’ August 2005 issue. He wanted me to talk about mp3s, QED Records and the future of music. I was game. Answered all the questions, (rather lengthily), sent in the email, and waited.
Toward a Truly Philippine Music
Do Filipinos have a unique musical sound? My answer is yes. But it isn’t being practised much by people outside of the local world music genre (Grace Nono, Joey Ayala, Bayang Barrios, Pinikpikan, etc.) Right now it exists though it’s more a vague fog than a typhoon of output.
I’m talking about folksong-inspired music — music which uses our local folk songs as inspiration. Not remakes of ethnic chants or remixes of kundimans, but rather traditional folksongs as building blocks for new music regardless of the genre of the final output (be it pop, classical, electronic, or death metal.) National artist and composer Lucio San Pedro called it Creative Nationalism.
Japan Odyssey: Gigging with Grace Nono at the World Expo 2005
From April 5 to 9, 2005, I was in Nagoya, Japan, as keyboardist, laptop musician and backup singer for the Grace Nono and Bob Aves group. We performed for one hour at the Expo Dome, a 3,000-seater auditorium located within the 300-hectare World Expo 2005 Nagakute site, which just days before us, featured Alanis Morisette. And we rocked the house with a set featuring songs which mixed traditional Philippine tribal music with Western-flavored and electronic arrangements. Traditional + experimental = spiritual world music in ancient languages.