Author: Louis Pelingen

  • ALBUM REVIEW: elijah – South II

    ALBUM REVIEW: elijah – South II

    Written by Julia Harumi Kudo

    True north is believed to be unwavering, ironclad. We like to imagine there is a fixed point somewhere ahead of us, killing time to vindicate every wrong turn. But on ‘South II,’ Elijah Canlas — or overtly elijah, as he asserts on being known here — offers a different orientation. The title gestures toward a place rather than an aspiration: ‘South II,’ the Cavite subdivision where he spent his formative years. The album doesn’t necessarily seek enlightenment so much as it excavates Elijah’s genesis. It is less concerned with becoming someone; it is, instead, hell-bent on remembering who he was before anyone was watching.

    For an actor who has primarily built his public image by inhabiting other people’s roles, ‘South II’ is, in a sense, a form of self-disclosure. “Sa acting… Hindi ako yung pinapanood nila. Ito ako lang ‘to eh. So parang, paano yan, diba? Parang husgaan nyo ako all you want. But I guess that’s the beauty of music”, Elijah remarked while discussing the album’s release with Philstar. Throughout the album’s compact runtime, you’d certainly hear Elijah still learning how to occupy his own voice after years of mastering everyone else’s, with the shadows of Kalel, Cairo, and the many characters that made him one of his generation’s most compelling young actors. And that voice is, admittedly, still finding its footing.

    The opening track, “Oras Mo Na Raw,” is intended as a declaration of mission, depicting a moment of awakening after a youth wandered too long, but it comes across more like a sketch than a revelation. The production is simple, and the lyrics are scuffed. It’s a surprisingly understated introduction, giving the impression of an artist who seems ready to introduce themselves but only offers a weak handshake. Still, even the album’s weaker moments reveal something refreshing: Elijah’s refusal to posture, to simply flow ersatz. Unlike many debut rap records, ‘South II’ contains significantly less mythmaking. Elijah hardly ever presents himself as supreme; instead, he ultimately acts as someone who has always been aware of his own immaturity. Whether that humility is instinctive or constructed, it still becomes the record’s greatest strength.

    Elijah, then, starts to turn into a firestarter when he’s not trying too hard to rap and instead becomes a storyteller at heart. “Mousetrap,” one of his favorite tracks, captures the kamikaze mythology of South II with enough detail to feel lived-in rather than just nostalgic. In “Asar Talo,” he muses, “I am not OA. I’m just not ok. Dami-daming gago dyan sa tabi mukhang kokey.” It’s ridiculous and brilliant at the same time. And the references fly fast, the enthusiasm faster. You can hear the poet before you hear the rapper, and that distinction matters. “U Wanna Be?” featuring SHNTI is beyond a shadow of a doubt, the album’s first undeniable spark. The production is sharper, more spacious, and substantially more confident. SHNTI’s flair adds an effortless charisma that transforms South II from a promising debut into the record it seems determined to become. By the time “Bituin” arrives, the album reveals what it has been moving toward all along: hope. This final track, based on an unfinished song by Elijah’s late brother JM, unravels the album’s ambition. The inclusion of JM’s original audio recording makes its simplicity all the more moving. In its wake, South II no longer feels solely moored to a subdivision. It belongs instead to the people who continue to linger in it, even in memory.

    ‘South II’ is an album title that suggests a geographical direction, but its emotional journey points somewhere else entirely. In these songs, Elijah spends his time clawing back old streets, revisiting old mistakes, and speaking to loved ones. By the end, finding your true north has little to do with moving forward; rather, it lies in understanding the south you came from.

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  • EP REVIEW: Slinky Fever – Feverish

    EP REVIEW: Slinky Fever – Feverish

    Written by JK Caray

    Slinky Fever, Megumi Acorda’s recently announced solo side-project, goes online with its synthpop debut EP ‘Feverish’ as the musician’s fresh venture into electronic music. Best known as the frontwoman of one of the local underground’s most successful dreampop acts, a move like this that seems to have completely come out of nowhere. Thus, it puts into view a few questions, with the most obvious one being: does the magic in her main band still carry into a project like ‘Feverish’?

    Opening with “Factory Girl, E.S.”, the world of ‘Feverish’ is introduced as a tasteful homage to the 80s New Wave that once dominated the airwaves. It’s got all these trademarks of glittery pads and dance drum loops with the added flair of feeling like you’re alone inside a dark room, solely lit by neon disco lights. In a way, ‘Feverish’ manages to make synthpop sound intimate with the tiniest bit of claustrophobia, in part due to the confessional lyrics and the electronic atmosphere, a decision that makes the EP more compelling.

    Initially created as a dump for Acorda’s music homework back in college, it has since been an outlet for the artist’s production practice. For the most part, the release being a “practice” makes sense. A few issues make it clear that she’s still finding her footing within the style of ‘Feverish’, most notably with the latter part of “There You Go Again”. Alongside the obsessive lyrical narrative, the juxtaposition between the unfeeling drum loops and the airy synths does not evoke the effect it’s attempting to give. 

    Performance-wise, Acorda’s signature soft, dreamlike vocals remain a welcome constant during the bulk of the EP. On tracks like “Heaven” and “Away”, these create a liminal environment that amplifies the longing and the neediness found within the tracks. However, it leaves more to be desired for the other tracks “There You Go Again” and “Factory Girl, E.S.”, both of which needed a more dynamic vocal presence to elevate their mood.

    Nevertheless, the handful of lows do not discredit the Slinky Fever’s promising experimentation into electronic pop. In the current sea of industry plants and trendhoppers, seeing a renowned musician risk their credibility to explore a different take on their artistry means a lot for budding artists scared to put their work out for the general public to scrutinize. 

    After all, Megumi Acorda and Slinky Fever are just two sides of the same coin; it’s still the same gentle voice, the same affective yearning. So, as long as the artist continues to authentically express their conceptual world, whether in different genres or mediums, that same magic will still be found in whatever kind of art they produce.

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  • EP REVIEW: Panjia – Astroboy

    Written by Paolo Elwick

    Shaun Alina’s Metro Manila-based alt rock outfit Panjia returns with their second EP ‘Astroboy,’ a sharper, more focused follow-up to their 2023 EP ‘all the colors that make you!!!’ Across the four-track project, the band paddles deeper into the waters of shoegaze and noise rock with a dense, feedback-heavy sound that feels both abrasive and vulnerable. The result is an EP that perfectly captures the kind of exhaustion that comes from living in a crowded city where everything feels too loud, too fast, and emotionally distant all at once.

    From the explosive, almost-cinematic intro that is “Rat Attack on Metro Manila!!!” to the relentless onslaught of drums on “Nauubusan Nanaman Ng Pagmamahal Si Belinda,” Astroboy is clearly built on a foundation of tension. And this is most evident when guitars crash through layers of distortion to create textured riffs that feel like the sonic equivalent of running your hands across concrete—which is exactly what makes the EP work. The distortion isn’t just there for aesthetic or shock value, it’s actually embedded into the storytelling itself. 

    The use of repetition, feedback, and grating instrumentals all come together to stage a sonic atmosphere that feels suffocating in a way that mirrors the emotional and physical fatigue of the urban day-to-day experience. But even at its most chaotic, the EP never feels directionless because the three-man group understands how to control momentum, allowing tracks to swell, collapse, and breathe without losing any weight. At times, the songs even feel like they’re on the verge of imploding or falling apart, but that instability is exactly what makes Astroboy exciting.

    It’s also no surprise that underneath all the noise and texture is a generous amount of vulnerability. Whether through melodies or personal lines buried underneath rough riffs and distorted strings like “Can’t you see / That I am not / Whoever you / Must think I am” from the closing track “Astroboy,” Panjia consistently finds a way to make chaos feel human by injecting softness and vulnerability into the harsh walls of sound they create.

    For a project with a run time of just over 13 minutes, ‘Astroboy’ is remarkably cohesive. Panjia captures the overwhelming nature of modern life without overexplaining it, trusting texture and atmosphere to communicate what words often can’t, creating an EP that’s loud, restless, and emotionally worn down—but also deeply alive.

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  • ALBUM REVIEW: dreaming blue flowers – endomorphins

    ALBUM REVIEW: dreaming blue flowers – endomorphins

    Written by Paolo Elwick

    Since introducing themselves with “Do(es) I(t) Matter?” at 123Block on June 21, 2024, dreaming blue flowers has bloomed into one of the more emotionally resonant acts in the local indie scene with songs rooted in vulnerability, introspection, and atmosphere. For members Lissia Ciel, Hannah Angelica, and Kern, that sensibility fully manifests on ‘endomorphin’, a mellow and melancholic debut effort that puts the lingering ache of heartbreak into words and notes before it slowly fades into memory.

    Setting the scene is a set of instrumentals either knee-deep in keys or swimming in strings — both, however, are excellent foundations that allow Lissia Ciel’s soft yet seemingly distant vocals to shine. The three-member indie folk band then adds a layer of vulnerability through lyrics like “I will find a way / to get through the maze / of failure to feel oneself / on countless days” from the title track “endomorphin”. While heartbreak remains the album’s emotional anchor, its songs are equally concerned with the aftermath of loss — the guilt, self-doubt, and emotional exhaustion that naturally accompany the end of any meaningful relationship. Across the album’s 43-minute runtime, these feelings seamlessly shift from wounds to reflections, making it clear that endomorphin is an exploration of how people carry pain, not how they get over it. 

    The arrangements reinforce that emotional weight by slowly unfolding, layer by layer, allowing pianos, strings, and percussion to thrust those emotions into the spotlight. This is particularly effective on “breath of life,” where the gentle instrumental mirrors the search for belonging amidst uncertainty with bright highs and muted lows, while “spaces between” starts mellow before eventually ramping up into a riff to represent the stress of wrestling with the painful realization that some relationships cannot be held together by effort alone.

    For both tracks, the drums are noticeable, but they rarely demand attention—instead, they serve to subtly shift momentum, while the strings and keys act as emotional cues that guide listeners through the album’s many moments of reflection. Even the vocals, echoing and softly drifting throughout the project’s runtime, contribute to this sense of restraint by creating distance that pairs well with the album’s introspective nature. In the process, everything comes together cohesively for an ephemeral, dream-like experience — something that isn’t always a given for full-length debuts, especially from burgeoning bands. But dreaming blue flowers seems surprisingly aware of who they want to be and the sound that they want to make.

    While having a clear identity is mostly positive, the songs on ‘endomorphin’ can sometimes feel too cohesive, often blending into one another with too much ease as if they’re one 40-something-minute song. The same patience that gives the album its dream-like quality also means that the songs often unfold in similar ways, with soft vocals, strings, keys, and adjacent themes occupying much of the same space. As a result, certain tracks sometimes blur together over the album’s runtime. For more present listeners, this might not be an issue, but this project rewards a listener who’s fully present with an immersive experience filled with nuggets of emotion, warmth, and depth.

    And maybe that’s exactly the point. Much like the memories and emotions it draws from, ‘endomorphin’ rarely arrives in sharp focus. Instead, it drifts between moments of clarity and haze, allowing heartbreak, regret, and longing to bleed into one another until they become inseparable. In doing so, dreaming blue flowers puts into sound a difficult truth about healing: our wounds never fully go away — they simply become part of the lives we live.

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  • EP REVIEW: Tarsius – Vikslotov

    EP REVIEW: Tarsius – Vikslotov

    Written by JK Caray

    Six years after their last album ‘Culture Cow’ in 2020, a few sets at international festivals, and appearances on a lot of compilation albums, Tarsius makes a long-awaited comeback with the release of their new EP ‘Vikslotov.’ In letting the tracks evolve and marinate, the Manila-based duo has surprisingly come out with a release reminding us that one of the electronic scene’s most acclaimed acts is still here to innovate.

    As the opening track, “Autophagy” doesn’t waste time introducing the plane of existence it belongs to. Arguably the EP’s standout track, “Autophagy” exists in different phases of a cerebral journey, guided by Jay Gapasin’s precise percussion work. In general, drum loops are used extensively throughout the EP, with the track “Oui” ditching traditional acoustic drums for more compact drum machine beats that sync with the song’s alienating leads and occasional vocal chops. Speaking of, “IKR”s more engaging use of chopped vocals does the heavy lifting in giving the track its own identity, leaning more on its playful, almost sassy sonic profile. Lastly, “Vagabond” rounds off the EP with a satisfying aural shift towards Melodic House beats after the tense, rhythmic push-and-pull present in “Spectrum”.

    At a distance, ‘Vikslotov’ looks like a release that came from the mix of different styles Tarsius has dabbled in after a long period of inactivity. With the risk of seeming like an “All must go” kind of EP, ‘Vikslotov’ may not be the duo’s most cohesive collection, but it’s the breathing, ever-present rhythm living inside these tracks that holds the release together. Building on that groove, ‘Vikslotov’ shows us the different forms Tarsius is capable of taking shape in. Though it may cause whiplash from the differences between the tracks’ personalities, it is a welcome change since Tarsius knows how to make each song interesting. Besides, when stripped down to its most basic form, isn’t electronic music simply about making insane drum beats and doing tons of experimentation?

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  • TRACK REVIEW: KXLE, Maxy Presko – Marlboro 

    TRACK REVIEW: KXLE, Maxy Presko – Marlboro 

    Written by Adrian Jade Francisco

    The local rap scene has built a habit of reshaping globally familiar sounds into something closer to home. Filipino hip-hop interpolation thrives as cultural déjà vu rather than just familiarity—KXLE and Maxy Presko inhale Post Malone’s “Psycho” and exhale something local known as “Marlboro.”

    The track opens with an instant earworm of a chorus, with lyrics “May chick ako na psycho / Di niya ko niloloko / Nandiyan lang sya palagi / Yung yosi nya Marlboro.” Its lyrical hook can sound silly, as in NATEMAN’s “IMMA FLIRT,” but its catchiness still lands just as hard. This time around, KXLE leans on his honed cloud and pop rap production. Drawing from his long experience in the genre, he filters “Psycho’s” melodic memory into the humid texture of Pinoy rap.

    While it lacks added sonic flavors in its instrumentals compared to its contemporaries who interpolate music from previous years, it instead thrives on its raw infectiousness. The interpolation doesn’t sit on top of the beat; however, it is the beat’s backbone.

    In “Marlboro,” that tradition continues not as imitation, but as translation—where borrowed melodies are reshaped into something that feels unmistakably local.

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  • ALBUM REVIEW: Ana Roxanne – Poem 1

    ALBUM REVIEW: Ana Roxanne – Poem 1

    Written by Julia Harumi Kudo

    Ambient music’s signet has always been atmosphere, but we often confuse the word with absence, ergo futile. Brian Eno imagined ambient music as ringings that move like weather, both trivial and essential, a crux for emotion rather than narrative. Even so, the best ambient records are not just background music. They are conditions of being. Ana Roxanne’s music craft understands this much like love, poetry, longing—the old weather systems of being alive. Erstwhile, the mental workings of her preternatural were pinwheeled on identity and being intersex, clad in wistful whimsy and flora. “When I learned that most flowering plants are hermaphrodites, that felt significant to me. I saw flowers in this new sense because they’re universally very beautiful.” And now in ‘Poem 1’, the branches of her trees move with sensuous asceticism, you see colors while listening to it: a weathered beige, perpetual periwinkle for penance, and a faithful trace of undying gold lingering with brushes of lush cymbals. 

    In “The Age of Innocence,” the opening track immediately establishes the album’s crossway. “I wanted to try. And go very far,” revealing existential exile and a desire for newness and transformation, as ambient synths incense the track with slow-moving textures and wuthering tenderness, her voice haunting and leading you into someplace of selfhood across 9 tracks of soundscape salvation. “Berceuse in A-flat Minor, Op. 45” keeps this atmosphere as Ana Roxanne plays with the imagery of fog, making the intangible feel physical but also contained. “My pre-performance ritual is to just be alone with my thoughts in a quiet room,” Ana Roxanne said at The Kitchen in New York with Axel Arigato. You can hear that solitude all over this record, not loneliness, but chosen aloneness: the mind becoming its own room, its own inkwell, its own thunder. One of the album’s visceral nuclei, “Keepsake,” dawns delicate piano chords and a restrained vocal performance. “Oh, I can never reach you. I’ll keep it this way.” Her ‘Ooh’s’ are lush and sensuous, completely angelic. She sings about it not being over, something that we’ve all heard, ignored, and felt before, but Ana Roxanne’s manifesto in yearning is something you cannot look away from. The piano progression permits the track to sing its heart, maybe not out loud, but in a half-formed dream, where she could write the person into permanence, in forever. “I can never reach you. So I’ll keep a piece bеside me,” immortalizing the memory and putting it into a heart-shaped box because turning it into a memento is the safest way of loving it, nothing can break, and it would never leave. But silence has always been the preferred language of longing. “X”, with its ambient echo texture, gives you time to think while the long synth pads give you time to listen. A sound that might be nothing or might be the beginning of the unfailing. 

    By the 6th track, “One Shall Sleep”, Ana Roxanne has reached deliverance; she’s done remembering, the waves have set her free. “Free of pain. Heaven has ’til morning.” She gives us an experience, a song, poetry, and a promise, the verging violin and the strings lacing together with whisperings of life’s noblesse. The sacral musing continues in one of the album’s strongest tracks, “Cover Me,” with a choral vocal arrangement and a ceremonious synth tone, cradling the ear in wishful prophecy. Praying, not necessarily to a God or a person, but toward the air, toward knowing that we are small-longing beings, but the world saves if you believe.

    In helix, the world of ‘Poem 1’ alone narrowly reached skyward nor revealed the spirit it twisted; the figment of it felt like it exists beyond naming, beyond ether — an ache to be one with the wind, to restore the invincible because hope is the thing with feathers, yet, never, in extremity, it begs for a bit of your identity.

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  • TRACK REVIEW: OONA. – DARAMA

    TRACK REVIEW: OONA. – DARAMA

    Written by Louis Pelingen

    Throughout the 2020s, the P-Pop space has continued to craft more talent worth seeking, especially across the girl groups that have their names established in their own way. Bini, VVINK, and Kaia are big examples of this, as they bring a different sonic presentation that reflects upon their identity as a group. This becomes a statement that OONA. – a newfound girl group consisting of experienced dancers and idols – is working through, all reflected upon their debut single, “DARAMA”.

    Right from the jump, OONA showcases a unique flair in their performances that immediately makes them stand out, as there’s a distinctive tone to each member’s voice, allowing their group dynamic to land with charm while not taking away their individual personalities. 

    OONA’s sweet presence on the microphone is also helped out by Neil “NJ” Subong and Eiron “pxyche” Reyes – the same people who produced for acts like Hev Abi, E-Kove, and Zae – providing an approachable beat with enough glossy keys and synths to add to OONA’s exploration of their feelings towards someone they like. Acknowledging this fluttery feeling of love, but they’re rather unsure of how to deal with it.

    The overall concept of exploring one’s feelings is quite inspired for OONA’s debut track, because as much as their hearts are fully exposed in this introductory song, they are still navigating their approach as vocalists and performers in their own right. There might be flubs in their delivery, but it paradoxically works nonetheless. After all, exploring one’s feelings takes quite a while to settle in, and for OONA, they’ll definitely figure things out in the long run.

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  • TRACK REVIEW: School Girl Classic – Tomorrow

    TRACK REVIEW: School Girl Classic – Tomorrow

    Written by Paolo Elwick

    Tomorrow usually doesn’t take long to arrive, but for fans of Cebu-based indie rock band School Girl Classic, it took six years before “Tomorrow.”

    During this period, the band’s members went their separate ways: one moved hundreds of kilometers away, another now plays for multiple other bands, and one is balancing a career in design while still making music. But as each carved out their own path, the future of School Girl Classic turned uncertain. And yet, even as the band drifted apart, the voice at the center of their music still stayed the same—Hana, the fictional schoolgirl through whose eyes their stories have always been told. She has always been the band’s narrator and mirror, a medium to communicate the relatable uncertainty that comes with growing up. In many ways, her story feels inseparable from the band’s own, making their return with “Tomorrow” not just about picking up where they left off, but about revisiting a character who, like them, has had plenty of time to change.

    Their growth is given the opportunity to shine through the single’s lyricism. On the one hand, it reads like a conversation with an old friend, full of updates, questions, and reminders. But on the other, it builds a harmonic mantra through tasteful repetition. Together, these give the song a friendly and approachable sense of familiarity that perfectly matches the instrumental’s various emotional ebbs and flows. And with a laidback drum loop as the steady foundation, the strings are given ample space to shine with riffs that build rhythm, and licks that emphasize and stress like sonic punctuation marks. 

    But “Tomorrow” isn’t just about growth; it’s also the band’s honest thoughts on time, waiting, and coming back—letting listeners know through Hana that the years in between their releases don’t just feel like gaps that they’re rushing to fill. The band chooses to acknowledge the distance, the change, and the uncertainty that have shaped who they are now.

    In the end, School Girl Classic’s “Tomorrow” is a reminder that coming back doesn’t mean returning to the exact same place. Things have shifted, people have grown, and even Hana, the fictional schoolgirl, now speaks with a little more clarity and intention. Waiting, then, becomes part of the story rather than something separate from it. With that in mind, “Tomorrow” feels less like a comeback and more like a continuation—just one that took its time to arrive.

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  • TRACK REVIEW: Training Wheels – simple socks

    TRACK REVIEW: Training Wheels – simple socks

    Written by Julia Harumi Kudo

    “Training Wheels” begins with the clicking sound of a bicycle’s freewheel. The song pedals a new echelon for Iggy San Pablo, the Toronto-based Filipino musician and Rusty Machines frontman, now recording under the name simple socks. Before the instruments break away in the track, there’s a nervy tick of motion without propulsion, that even after your body has stopped pedaling, your motor memory is still trying to justify itself. A siren shrills within earshot, then someone honks as the voices blur, but the city continues to move, ignoring them all. Then the guitar interrupts the street’s noise, sharp and precise with a crisp rhythm, while the drums stall like an engine refusing to start; every sound seems to hesitate between movement and paralysis. And simple socks’ singing is restrained, as though driven by survival instinct, like the voice of someone desperately and politely trying to suppress their emotions so as not to explode in public. 

    What makes “Training Wheels” so compelling lyrically is how it consistently frames migration as this never-ending process. Iggy San Pablo writes about distance without romanticizing sacrifice this time. “It’s a long distance away/Still call you anyway” conjures a forlorn intimacy with phone calls from overseas during different time zones. One person is wide awake, while the other is fast asleep on the opposite shore. As the song reaches its midpoint, it becomes clearer that the very essence of conviction is slowly coming into focus, culminating in the lyrics, “The pavement’s rough, but I know I need to move along.” He repeats the phrase “I need to move along,” but it no longer sounds like a source of motivation; rather than an affirmation, it starts to sound compulsory, a survival strategy.

    But there is irony at play in all of this. Expressing the alienation of immigrants through English, a language inherited and symbolizing both hope and the scars of colonial rule, is already analogous to surrendering a part of oneself to translation. The memories of diaspora are rarely passed down in their entirety. “Training Wheels” lives precisely within this contradiction. To live between two countries means not fully belonging to either, caught between the homeland from which one grew up and left and the hostland that still treats you as provisional. However, this song refuses to succumb to self-pity. After the final repetition, what remains is not despair, but momentum. The freewheel clicking at the beginning returns as a metaphor for the momentum sustained by past efforts, even if the direction is uncertain. Iggy San Pablo’s greatest strength as a songwriter lies in his restraint. He never exaggerates his experiences into grandiose political revelations, and this stance remains unchanged. The production stays lean and restless, the guitars don’t smooth out the arrangements but rather create gaps, and the drums are always in danger of completely losing their rhythm. “Training Wheels” remains hopeful precisely because it refuses resolution. Iggy San Pablo does not land on wholeness by the end of the track. He simply keeps pedaling. In lesser hands, that ambiguity might feel unfinished. Here, it feels honest.

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