Summer 2016. Boredom. Frustration.
Another night watching The Needle Drop, reading TinyMixTapes, looking over Sophie’s Floorboard, and discovering new acts at Gorilla vs. Bear while the local scene starved for music criticism. Fuck it — founder Elijah Pareno started typing.
No fancy mission statement, no corporate backing, just a blog called THE FLYING LUGAW and a middle finger to the idea that Philippine music writing had to play nice.
This wasn’t gonna be some polished zine sucking up to major labels. It took the rawness of the initiative — a DIY collective built on two rules:
1) Care about the music
2) Taking care of each other.
By 2018, it wasn’t just a one-man operation anymore. The Flying Lugaw crew grew from writers, photographers, to terminally online folks pulled from college gigs and basement shows. People who actually gave a shit.
No press releases or whatever. Just real talk about real music.
As the years went by, The Flying Lugaw did what no one expected: They built IRL stages.
Ever since the tail end of the 2010s, they’ve partnered with budding independent productions SYQL, Sleeping Boy, Furiosa — other outcasts who knew the score. Additionally, they booked Meaningful Stone from Seoul. Brought Softcult from Canada. Gave Singapore’s Sobs & Subsonic Eye a place to wreck shit.
But the real victory?
Platforming homegrown talent like Yaelokre, Barbie Almalbis, Zild — not as “local openers” but as headliners worth the attention.
The Flying Lugaw doesn’t “curate experiences.”
They start shit up in a scene drowning in influencer trash and sponsored content, they’re the stubborn bastards still handing out mixtapes at the back of the venue.
You want the future of Philippine music? It’s not in some major label’s boardroom. It’s in the sweat-drenched crowds at The Flying Lugaw shows. It’s in the writers who’d rather starve than write fluff. It’s in the simple, screaming truth they’ve fought for since day one:
HEAR EVERYTHING.
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