Life's surprises

Life is always full of surprises. Sometimes, things will work out when you least expect it.

When I was recording songs for the "Walking On A third World Street" CD back in February 2003, the second track of the CD album, We Are All Atoms was just a supporting piece. Meaning, it was written just to give the concept of the CD a boost.

The bets were Purple-a melodic, new-wave love song laced with poetic lyrics and a violin solo; Gabi Na Naman-a catchy tune with a nocturnal ambiance and sounds like The Doors' People Are Strange; and I Wanna Be A Belly dancer, a material that tempts you to dance with its orchestrated strings and a display of guitar plucking.

After it was uploaded in the Internet, I Wanna Be A Belly Dancer got a lot of positive feedbacks from critics and was given a special song feature. Furthermore, Gabi Na Naman was played on KPFT 90.1 Houston, Texas. And Purple to date has 159 airplays over an Internet radio.

But it was We Are All Atoms that drew the most attention from Internet critics and DJs alike. In line with other songs written by local musicians, We Are All Atoms in a way has proven that unsigned Filipino artists can produced materials that both appeal and level with American and European standards.

We Are All Atoms starts with a sci-fi like string intro, followed by the repetitive sounds of children's toys and then the drumbeats. The rest of the instruments will follow, leading to an upbeat song with a swing-like rhythm and a radio-sounding voice amplifying its electronic atmosphere.

However, I had a hard time during the "mix down," which is the process of adjusting the song's volume, equalization and other properties, because its bass section has a technical problem. With its six-minute duration and a chaotic guitar instrumental, my expectations about the song vanished.

Nevertheless, the song was uploaded in several music sites July of 2004. Weeks after, We Are All Atoms top the new wave charts of besonic.com and received several song features. Months later, it was included in the play lists of songplanet.com's Internet radio and counted my name into the top 100 artists since then. Thus resulted in a live interview on the Lucky Fokker Show in October 2004-an Internet radio program which broadcasts from Portland, USA and features unsigned musicians worldwide.

To date, We Are All Atoms is slowly circling the world. It is being played in Arabic and Russian bars in the Middle East, has been heard by fellow Filipinos in places like San Diego, California and Newfoundland, Canada. March of this year, the song was again included in the play list of DKOU, an AM station based in San Francisco bay area, which has an estimated number of 7 million listeners. I have received phone calls and emails about the songs' statistics every now and then, which goes to say that life's indeed full of surprises.

Similarly, a fellow Ilonggo musician, John Cabalum known in the net as "Nervegasm" has topped mp3.com with his song Death Chasing Cars. He was featured on fanzines in Brazil and Turkey and had collaborated with musicians from other countries. Currently, his song Jazzchronic is topping the "over all category" charts at soundlift.com, with the Philippine flag beside his name.

Indeed, the advancing technology such as the Internet has provided an opportunity for unsigned artists (like yours truly) to promote their music globally. Among them are bands and musicians like Sheila and The Insects, ManoMano, Urban Dub, Evilwrum, Pointclick Kill and the now acoustic trio Tweakz 'N Reverbz. Their music are being heard by listeners all over the world, which again uplifts our pride of being Filipinos.

Life really surprises. But first, we have to put a lot of hard work and honesty in everything we do. With that, I'm sure that more good things will come our way, and yes, we can truly say that the gods are just being fair.