Beer and loathing

A Kafkaesque image: to wake up one morning and feel like a loathsome insect. To be loathed makes one feel alive. Admiration doesn’t last. The same with its more slutty cousin love. Now, hatred is longer lasting, like that nameless thing that squats at the bottom of the sink and refuses to budge.

I wrote an article last week titled "Instant dharma’s Gonna Get You" about one of the best Filipino bands around, Up dharma Down. I got a lot of flak for a few things I mentioned in that piece. The issues raised (blatant band-bashing, etc.) were so trivial that I am just going to brush them off like dandruff. I got the urge to hold the over-reactors’ hands and sing Christmas songs with them. I have always stated that music is subjective. I wrote in PULP years ago:

"Do not believe every word you read, especially when it comes to music. Music is an intensely personal affair. It is extremely subjective. It is not rocket science where constants thrive. Music is the home of variables – one man’s Mozart is another guy’s Milli Vanilli. Music is ineffable, as mysterious as mist, and is a matter of taste. Opinions inevitably rule music articles from the New Musical Express to Songhits. It is up to the readers to hear their own way – and be guided (not taught) by music writers. Do not swallow everything they say, hook, line and freaking sinker. Including greats like Lester Bangs or Juaniyo Arcellana (or a third-rate rock scribe like me). Read the good ones, but germinate your own thoughts on music. Yes: in a country where almost everyone is a writer, the rest should be critical readers." Pretty opinionated, huh? Everything is based on analysis by biased brains, anyway.

However, let me just clarify one thing: I never dissed Drip. (Blame it on beer for making me mix up samplers and turntables, and confounding readers in the process) I never got around to reviewing the band’s debut "Far Side Of The World" out of laziness, not for anything else.

First of all, I respect the musical acumen of Malek Lopez. I saw Rubber Inc. (a duo composed of Malek and Noel de Brackinghe) a couple of times at the old Verve Room in Malate years ago, and I loved the way Rubber Inc. manipulated sound.

Musicians who play electronica (a tag no one wants to get burdened with) are the equivalent of conceptual artists. How do you write music or create art when your surroundings are transforming into the cityscapes of Blade Runner or Brave New World? How do you react to a post-post-modern world that has become mechanized, digitalized and compartmentalized beyond belief? What do you do when the old instruments or old media no longer express new realities?

It would be absurd if artists like Damien Hirst or Jeff Koons painted in the manner of the Impressionists, instead of erecting shocking and ironic installations like "The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living" by Hirst, or Koons’ kitschy chimpanzee and bunny sculptures. That’s what’s appealing about the pioneering music of Aphex Twin, Squarepusher (one of my favorites), and those who write the soundtrack to our gigabyte generation. For them, content becomes form and vice versa. A guy like Malek understands that completely I am sure.

I was with Ian Magbanua (who is in charge of loops and beats), when he won in Philips’ DJ competition in South Africa, beating his counterparts from other countries. I also went with him to London to record his track at legendary Abbey Road, which was produced by John Mollet of Ministry of Sound. And Abbey Road, for kids out there, is where The Beatles made much of the influential band’s mind-expanding music.

For a guy like Ian, electronica is not so much a genre as a method, a medium, or another approach to making music. We had long talks about DJ Shadow, Portishead, UNKLE, pioneering composer David Axelrod and the nature of electronic music. Amazing how Ian has lots of nifty ideas. Now if I had just 20 percent of the musical talent of Ian and Malek, I would be a very happy man trip-hopping all over the place.

In my "opinion" (the quotation marks are intentional), Drip is a band that skillfully meshes forward-thinking electronic music, science fiction noodlings, and a timeless pop appeal. As for the other bands (which I didn’t name in the first place), I stand by what I wrote. Oh what the heck, let me take that back. I think they are all good blah blah blah. Now, let us all join hands and sing Joy To The World.

But wait… If every band is a good band, then what is a good band?

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Dirty Kitchen (featuring visual and graphic artist Datu Arellano) will launch its debut album tonight at Mag:net Café in Katipunan. Also playing is The Late Isabel. For comments, suggestions, curses and invocations, e-mail iganja_ys@yahoo.com.