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¿Como estas / Kamusta?

Hey ______ / Señor _____,

Remember me? This is _________ ______ “Migi” de Belen, your Filipino student at __________ University, 2007. If you’re not sure who I am, I was the guy with long hair and glasses who loved making music on his laptop, and who was always, always late for class. I owe you a proper e-mail after my sudden disappearance from London. It took me this long to write you because I felt I wasn’t ready to contact you, because for the longest time I was the same as when I had left your classroom: someone with infinite potential and infinite excuses.

I am writing this message from a borrowed computer, on my first day at work in a new office. My morning coffee is still warm. I am a copywriter for a digital advertising agency. I still haven’t earned my university degree, but despite that, I think finally my life has direction. I’ve held plenty of odd jobs previously; I even went back to uni for a semester here in Manila, but abandoned that idea. It’s only right now that I feel like I’ve “graduated” from my old self.

I’ve been waiting for the proper time to tell you, “Hey, ______, remember me? I was difficult to teach, but now, after so many years, the lessons have finally gotten through to me! Thank you!” …It appears that I am once again terribly late. Years late.

Warm regards and early Christmas greetings,
-Migi

Blog Entry #1

(originally posted as a Facebook Note on Wednesday, October 31, 2012 at 5:43pm)

Advertising teaches me that most ideas are disposable. Thought is a process: to arrive at a Big Idea, routes must be plotted, and mostly later scratched out anyway. If I look at a Big Idea as a point of arrival, I haven’t arrived; I’ve only made several departures. Why am I jealous of people posting pictures of themselves in costume? Why has that raw desire translated into me wanting to write a Facebook note?

The Aquarius horoscope maintains that 2012 would be a year of death and rebirth. I can’t count how many times I’ve died. Maybe this impulse to write something “lengthy”, to defy the microblog trend and to revert to early 2000’s Tabulas and Livejournal-style blogging, is a rebirth. Maybe it’s the bad kind, where I’m simply repeating myself, rehashing, regressing. Jesus not as Holy Spirit, but as zombie.

Blogs were originally intended to be points of departure, link curations that defined an individual’s experience of the internet, and in a sense, defined the individual (at least hyperreally). Though it’s not New Year’s day, nor my birthday, this “newer-school” type blog entry is one of those sentimental attempts to plot this year’s personal victories and tragedies into a “sensible” framework. Maybe I’m afraid because I don’t know what I’m afraid of, and writing is my Jack-o-Lantern.

Support Filipino vocal house music! Have a free listen.

Source: SoundCloud / Nights of Rizal

Shift

You start forgetting days, start counting

your life in minutes. You reference places

where you never are, even talk about the weather.

 

You mute your slips of color.

 

Composing your thought-by-thought,

you finally hear that sunshine

too many singers sing about—you liken it

to a California summer. As afternoon’s bursting

through your jalousies,

you no longer shift in your sleep.

 

You do it for customer care, you give in

because it’s company policy. Begin

with phonological control: permit your muscles

to forget. Learn with your mouth

 

the meaning of “liaison”, drown your vowels out

with schwas; pop your P’s and T’s, seduce your ears

with a brand new consonance. It’ll come naturally, as in

a dream, as if you’d been inspired. One minute,

the voice in your head has changed.

Scuba’s Personality: a review

The big daddy of my favorite UK label Hotflush Recordings returns on February 27th, 2012 with another full-length collection of Electronic Dance Music after 2 years: Personality.

album art from factmag.com, no copyright infringement intended

The new LP is in many ways NOT a follow-up to 2010’s brooding dubstep/future/bass album Triangulation. It’s easy to call Scuba’s Personality “multiple”, noting that this pivotal UK (post-?)dubstep producer seems to have drifted completely away from the shuffling, heaving, moody beats, synths, and atmospheres that have so far characterized his music. In fact, the album introduces itself with a very floor-friendly electro groove in “Ignition Key”, which sounds a bit alien even in the context of his other, house/techno-driven project, SCB. His tracks range from 4x4 grooves in “Underbelly” to almost-cheesy-80’s-synth-laden club tunes in one of my favorites, the very catchy “July”. He even evokes new (perhaps “nu”?) jack swing in “NE1BUTU”! If in Triangulation Scuba seemed to be brooding, in Personality there are quite a few moments where he seems almost ecstatic.

What seems a deliberate nod to his previous work though is the track “Cognitive Dissonance”, which is similar to the halfstep track “So You Think You’re Special” from Triangulation. I love the track title and I wonder if Scuba (aka Paul Rose) might be referring to the psychological term in a marketing context, which is the theory behind advertisements published for the sole purpose of (re)assuring customers who have already purchased a given product that yes, they made the right choice. “Cognitive Dissonance” features that familiar pulsating bass, that distinctly cut-up, echoing breakbeat; and it seems to reassure me that regardless of huge leaps in style, I am still listening to Scuba. “Action” and ”The Hope” are also somewhat reminiscent of his earlier sound, but then again, not really. Overall, I think Personality has managed to coherently tie a myriad of sonic ideas and ambiances together; that said, this might just be Scuba’s moodiest release yet.