Written by JK Caray How does a song mirror one’s life? (e)motion engine’s debut EP ‘tell me how you f(e)el’ doesn’t really give you an answer, but it provides a slate for you to write on. 6-piece indie rock outfit (e)motion engine has been all over the scene. From the release of their first track “mlb” dating back to 2024, the band has quickly cultivated a dedicated fanbase. After a year of teasing tracks, their newest EP ‘tell me how you f(e)el’ only pushes them further into their growing success. If you’ve gone to a few of (e)motion engine’s gigs over the years, you’ll know the kind of dynamic energy they bring to a set. With engaging performances that often result in a moshpit here and there, it’s a wonder that they’ve managed to record the same kinetic vibe in their EP. It’s another wonder that they’ve managed to be sonically consistent with the rest of their portfolio, mostly attributed to the edgy pop punk sound that permeates through all their songs which is a nod to their emo roots. (e)motion engine’s identity is deeply engraved into their music that it doesn’t just sound the same, it sounds uniquely them. ‘tell me how you f(e)el’ reads like a diary. At times it feels alive, as if someone occasionally peeking through the drum beats. Each song acts as a journal entry, capturing the essence of being in a certain moment. It’s filled with different scenarios that may conjure up a memory or two; “milk” is the entry for when your mind betrays you as you remember somebody you shouldn’t. On the other hand, “keep it in” is a track you want to expel some pent up energy, while “mlb” celebrates the beauty of life and the privilege of seeing it blossom in front of you. Not all of it has to be profound, much like how every day can’t always be exciting, but it speaks true to the human experience. Throughout the EP, (e)motion engine carefully tiptoes the line between telling a story and letting the listener fill in the blanks. At its very core, the tape hinges on your vulnerability to trust in it. It’s the record that you go to at the end of the day, like the vent folder in your notes app or the childhood blanket you cry to. It wants to make you feel seen. Now it’s up for you to decide, are you willing to ‘tell me how you f(e)el’ or are you still scared to make it real? SUPPORT THE ART AND THE ARTIST:
Tag: EP Review
EP REVIEW: my cat wrote this song – i would spend my 9 lives with you
Written by Adrian Jade Francisco As of late, a wave of local skramz acts has surfaced in the local scene, with raw-knuckled DIY outfits like Ghost Stories, Limbs, and adult sunday school in the mix. My cat wrote this song’s ‘I would spend my 9 lives with you,’ however, is a warm blanket in the form of a lo-fi sound. The bedroom skramz project draws from the spirit of Your Arms Are My Cocoon through subtle acoustic guitars, twinkly synths, and vocals that feel like crying into your phone at 2 A.M. Tracks “hanger” and “chi chi!” curl up in your ears as a clingy cat would and refuse to let go due to their lo-fi melodies. The EP’s production holds onto constant vulnerability from start to finish, even as the screams scrape the surface. “Flutter_fracture” and “a place to lay your head” showcases this balance of fragility and ferocity that is heard throughout ‘i would spend my 9 lives with you.’ My cat wrote this song’s five-track debut succeeds in carving out its own intimate corner amidst the cathartic aggressions. The project knows when to nuzzle and when to dig its claws in, ‘i would spend my 9 lives with you’ hums like a lullaby, but hits like a midnight meltdown. SUPPORT THE ART & THE ARTIST: i would spend my 9 lives with you by my cat wrote this song
EP REVIEW: RamonPang – The Answer Breaks
Written by Louis Pelingen LA-based musician RamonPang is a lover and educator of electronic music. His short-form content alone shows his firm testament to providing a history of the development of electronic music. He imparts curiosity for everyone to keep an eye out for experimental music and bridges a space for new people towards the beauty and ethos of the genre. All delivered with insight, open-approachability, and passion that drives him forward, especially as a Filipino making waves within a mostly westernized genre such as IDM. Those characteristics also apply to his music as well. Major influences such as Aphex Twin and Four Tet have paved to what he wants to create in his own music: colliding unpredictable edges of IDM with the inviting structures of EDM. A staunch set of elements that never breaks apart within every project that he has pulled together thus far. 2021’s ‘Nature System’ is sleek and eclectic in its flexible melodies and otherworldly textures; 2022’s ‘Third Places’ focuses more into the communal space, sweeping up soulful samples and saturated mixes into nervy dance grooves; and 2024’s ‘Life Cycle Waves’ is elastic and varied, where walls of prickly IDM and meditative ambiance contort on one hand and meld on the other. A year later, what does the ‘The Answer Breaks’ EP add to RamonPang’s discography? Simple: a set of lean, accessible cuts that’s just as shiny and punchy as ever. Each track transports to a grounded, yet breathtaking soundscape. “The Answer” hypnotizes with that female vocal looping across textured drums and fizzy synth lines. “Broadcastyl” is dreamy and energetic in its buildup. Shimmering synth pads and jazz samples allow the steady breakbeat to unleash its energy, capitalized further through the guitar passages that rev in its melody. “Daly City Skyline” sets the stage for ’90s breakbeats to slide in. Pulsating acid synths and crashing drum rhythms gradually energize, similar to a race car willing to exhaust all of its gas just for a thrilling chase. ‘Brand Blvd’ puts everything into a calming finish, where inclusions of kalimbas add a playful charm around rapid rhythms and swells of glacial synth waves. While the sonic display of electronica that RamonPang exports into the EP doesn’t expand much in comparison to his past works, the tight approach to melodic making is a focus worth highlighting. An experimentation that never leaves RamonPang’s lucid soundscapes, only deepening the way he arranges his compositions. The answer may not exactly break new ground, but its compact structure is enough to leave a pleasant impression. Support the art and the artist:
EP REVIEW: ARKYALINA – Underneath Your Jagged Lines
Written by Louis Pelingen The moment that Arkyalina — also known as Tavin Villanueva — put out “readmymind” last year, it showcases just how much young acts like him are willing to synthesize different points of influence and make it their own. Cementing their own sonic identity and stylism that never compromises their passion and their intensity as musicians, both in recording and live performances. As someone who has seen him perform live, intensity is indeed the emotion that he pulls off well, all paired with scarlet red visuals and a sharply detailed mask that complements the jagged guitar work, skittering beats, and burnished vocals that he exposes in his performances. After releasing a couple of singles that now lead to his debut EP, ‘Underneath Your Jagged Lines’, something has shifted between last year and now. There is an adjustment towards how Arkyalina delivers as a vocalist and as a producer, providing more emphasis on build-ups and pulsating electronics to give his voice more space to play off with. The rhythmic shuffle of “Gaze (By Your Side)” and the squealing EDM pads of “Wish” are prime examples of this, where Arkyalina pairs back his intensity and allows himself to unravel in it, carefully crafting sharper melodies along the way. Of course, that guitar-driven, vocally fervid side of him is still here. Besides the already stellar “readmymind” with all the layers of chalky drums and blurry swells of strings that give Arkyalina soar vocally, “Ersatz” and “Remembrance, a tragedy” deliver in this front as well. The former’s rampage of guitar riffing leads to one glowing crescendo, and the latter’s weighty drums and guitar rumbles only amplify his anguished singing and screaming. Those contrasts do make some sense as Arkyalina unveils the tension within his writing. Detailing a post-breakup relationship that’s weighed on a lot of give and takes, with him giving so much of himself to the point that he is stuck in a rut. Never exactly willing to let go, as he reminisces on the time that he and his ex have spent together and reminisces about the moments where both of their flaws have been shown. It leads to Arkyalina constantly being in this push and pull stasis, constantly stretched apart by his internal angst and melancholy, but even then, he shows that he still cares about that relationship at the end of the day. As noted on the last track, “Remembrance, a tragedy”, he tries to reach out, acknowledge his mistakes, and hope that there’s still a chance to recoup from those mistakes. Even if such chances of reconnecting might be too late to be considered. While this overall theme can justify why Arkyalina’s decisions in his vocal mix and delivery are a bit more meticulous and submerged as he is swimming through his own emotional headspace, it can also lead to those choices exposing some of the EP’s weaknesses. “Ersatz” is lacking one more verse to really make its crescendos hit even harder; the glitchy, gauzy flair on “Everything Falls Apart” blurs so much that the melody washes out from one way to another; and the attempt for this weary vocal timbre amidst the heavier production mix on “Black Sea” becomes one note, especially as Arkyalina’s delivery doesn’t exactly vary and the buildup to that scream on the end of the song is so faintly heard. But, overall, ‘Underneath Your Jagged Lines’ is defined by choices and shifts that are intentionally thought out. Filled with meticulous mixes and vocal tones that emphasize the EP’s reddish intensity and bluish melancholy, all of which put Arkyalina in a space where there is still a lot of traversing to go into, recognizing the highs and lows that he must confront and refine upon. In wading underneath those lines, the waves will smooth their jagged edges, turning them into a more resplendent texture. Support the art and the artist:
EP REVIEW: Horseboyy – Horsepowah
Written by Anika Maculangan Writer and scholar McKenzie Wark once said, “To rave is to forget your name, to forget the logic of the market, to move without the burden of being anyone in particular.” In her book Raving, she describes it as more than an action: a living practice, shaped by bodies, rhythm, and movement. “Raving is stepping outside the everyday,” she writes, “without needing to know or care what will replace it.” What one feels when they listen to Horsepowah is more or less similar to this kind of energy that Wark explains in her work: vibrant, liberating, and full of life. Every pulse throbs with a collective sense of euphoria. A feeling that makes you leave the skeleton of your body. This is the most notable quality of Horsepowah: the way it moves as its own organism, creating a world with no hierarchy other than the steady law of the beat. You give yourself over to it, piece by piece, until you’re nothing but sweat and oxygen, the crowd fused into a single mass of heat and motion, pulling you deeper the more you move and shift to its tempo. Horsepowah doesn’t offer the kind of out-of-body drift sold as escapism. It’s not about vanishing from the world, but about occupying it differently. Leaving the body here doesn’t mean abandoning it; it means loosening its borders, and letting its edges blur — a tendency that’s easily recognized in some of Horseboyy’s earlier works, namely his contribution to Sounds Nais, Vol.4 and collaboration with Pette Shabu on BINGO! in 2023. Such projects that, without a doubt, prove he is no stranger to crafting surreal soundscapes. The debut gains its charged but unhurried effect by sculpting an atmosphere around tropical warmth, distilling its brightness into a slow, saturated glow. One that finds its perfect counterpart in Gal Costa’s voice, floating through the air like a light breeze, curling into the cadence of ’90s house and techno, all the while stepping into the laid-back quality of the beach. Look on to tracks like “Cheap Steam (Hold Me)”, one of the lengthier songs in the EP, which glides at a gradual pace, but is easy to sink into. A similar feature that is just as prominent in “Third Base”, a track you can get lost in while not getting too carried away. All of which embody the constant, but fluctuating patterns of the rest of the EP’s trajectory. Although one could find themselves craving for sharper edges, these subtleties are also what happens to make each track so immersive, always making sure to keep the listener at arm’s length. In fact, when interviewed by Jacob Mendoza for Mixmag Asia, Horseboyy himself stated that he wanted to “slow it down a bit.” A statement that leads one to believe that all along, this was the goal. And in that sense, Horsepowah succeeds almost effortlessly, not in overwhelming you with volume or density, but allowing for time to be taken at every step of the way. Out of this comes an EP that feels free-flowing yet intentional, balancing spontaneity with precision in a way that invites engagement without losing direction, drawing you deeper into its world until you’re no longer just listening, but breathing in its essence; a state of momentum you end up taking with you beyond the dancefloor. Support the art & the artist: Horsepowah EP by Horseboyy
EP REVIEW: enfloeia – Saturnine Pursuits
Written by Aly Maaño Malaybalay, Bukidnon, dubbed as the South Summer Capital of the Philippines, is a city nestled between lush mountains and picturesque landscapes. These lands, which birthed forests and historical parks, are also home to emerging artists like Aleeza Dawn Ellevera. Calling herself enfloeia for this musical project, the 19-year-old fuses indie, pop, jazz, and alternative sensibilities to create songs that seem to be taken straight from her diary. After releasing her first single in 2024, enfloeia carefully planted the seeds to bring “Saturnine Pursuits” into full bloom. Each song in this six-track EP is like a flower petal pressed into the pages of a journal—its unique shape and desaturated color bleeding through the thin paper, revealing dark secrets and confessions. Starting with the track “Going in reverse,” enfloeia lets us pry into her thoughts through cellophane drums and guitars and lyrics that mark the “x” in existential. It’s an upbeat starter with melodies that careen playfully into the pre-chorus and build to the hook. After the sprightly listen, we are greeted with somber keys of “to…,” the artist’s debut single. In contrast to the first track, “to…” eases us into euphonious jazz-pop rhythms and vocals that carry a wistful undertone. “FROGCRUSHER!” is possibly one of the best tracks in the entire project. Here, enfloeia’s aptness for writing poetry shone the most. The lyrics are dark, brooding, and morose—the kind that makes you wish you wrote them yourself. In between ambient nature sounds, soft ukulele strums, abrupt violin tremolos, and frogs being crushed, enfloeia’s haunting vocals distort into overlays and harmonies that add a theatrical element to the song. If you listen closely, a part of the previous song’s melody is hidden in “FROGCRUSHER!’s” bridge, where enfloeia’s overlapping voices can be heard, figuratively illustrating the human tendency to push people away despite craving meaningful connection. The shorter tracks of the EP, “you/have,” and “Poor Dreamer,” share similar structures but carry different emotional depths. “you/have” expresses feelings of jealousy towards a partner for having the privileges of being a man, while “Poor Dreamer” is a peronal anecdote on the frustrations of being discouraged from pursuing what you’re passionate about. Even with the minimalist approach to instrumentation, enfloeia tugs on the listener’s heartstrings at every transition until the very end. In a full-circle moment, “In Pursuit of Greatness” brings us back to the beginning of this saturnine ode—in a frantic and confused state. Being at wit’s end, enfloeia further showcases her vocal prowess and versatility as she belts the chorus, a signature formula in the opening track. As it ends, the repeating line “I’ve become so saturnine…” echoes like the voice in your head you’ve been accustomed to hearing and accepted as a part of you. A testament to her commitment to music, “Saturnine Pursuits” is enfloeia’s attempt to remind us and herself that sitting with the discomfort and uncertainty of it all is part of the process. With this EP as a starting point, it’s exciting to know how she will continue to turn her garden of woes into a kaleidoscopic flowerfield. And if there’s one thing about enfloeia’s style, it’s the way she delivers lyrics that hit at the right moment. Through hushed verses and belted choruses, enfloeia evokes strong feelings that ponder on self-worth and the struggles of being a young musician. Support the art & the artist:
EP REVIEW: Organ Harvest – Desecration of Human Essence
Written by Adrian Jade Francisco A victim was slain by 12 minutes of “Desecration of Human Essence.” The suspect is identified as Organ Harvest, charged with first-degree grindcore. The 14-track EP from Manila act Organ Harvest checks every box on the goregrind autopsy report: carnage, speed, and lacerations in every frequency range. Marked by cuts such as “Silent Scream Symphony,” “Autopsy Buffet,” and “Post Mortem Salvation,” it epitomizes the horrors of forced organ harvesting through breakneck riffs, guttural explosions, and blastbeat trauma. Organ Harvest’s debut doesn’t reinvent the genre, but it doesn’t have to. Sometimes mastering a formula is more effective than breaking it, especially when that formula involves the precise balance of chaos and control that defines grindcore. It’s not about evolution; it’s about execution. ‘Desecration of Human Essence’ delivers no pulse, no mercy, no cleanup — just the sound of deathgrind done right. SUPPORT THE ART & THE ARTIST: Desecration Of Human Essence by Organ Harvest
EP REVIEW: muckmedicine – Caspian
Written By Rory Marshall What do you get when you are in a dark bedroom, a Stratocaster, and being deep in the throes of melancholia? That’s what’s in store in muckmedicine’s newest EP “Caspian”. Spanning across 6 tracks are scattered thoughts and confessions left unsaid; a voice echoed through angsty indie rock. This EP is the second long-form release since Migs Tabilin’s debut EP “Inside Enclosures” back in 2020, and with this most recent project, he doubles down on his lo-fi sound. How muckmedicine differs from his sister band Fairview Far — which features more upbeat indie rock and playful lyrics — is that he takes the opportunity in his solo work to indulge in dejection. With Tabilin’s solo work, he explores his melancholy and puts his inner monologue into song, using the audience as a stand-in for the person he wishes to let into his psyche. It’s intimate lyrically, which is only accentuated by the lo-fi vibe that Tabilin has embraced wholeheartedly. “Warmth” and “Erase Me (I Hope She Listens to Modern Baseball)” feature lyrics directed to a once-loved one. As a listener, it’s akin to reading a letter addressed to someone else, and what’s found in those letters is pining and unreciprocated love. The songwriting varies on other tracks, reading more like vignettes of thought. Scattered ideas similar to ones that intrusively pop up in your head while trying to go to sleep. This is seen in songs like “Please Play Florist At My Funeral” and the intro “Pattern,” which features a monologue from Ice King of Adventure Time. It adds to the DIY aesthetic, harkoning to tiktoks where people put midwest emo riffs on top of random monologues from cartoons. True devastation is found in the combination of the two writing styles, which is no better showcased in the final track “Cut”. The song takes an even more sullen turn than the previous entries of the EP. It’s an unresolved goodbye led with resentment, and conversely, longing for what still could be. The abrupt and straightforward lines slice deep into the chest: “I don’t ever wanna see your fucking face again, I never wanted to see any of you again”. But the knife finds more purchase with the last line of the EP: “I never made a gesture, but I wanted you to stay”. The production of the project lends a lot to the intimacy of the overall sound; The lo-fi bedroom rock sound only adds charm to the EP, further emphasizing the vibe of being alone in your room with only your thoughts to keep you company. The vocals are, at times, passed through an EQ filter, reminiscent of hearing a voicemail left late at night, as seen in “Wednesday”. The crunchy distortion of the guitars adds depth to the morose nature of the music and adds to the swell of the breakdowns in tracks like “Patterns” and “Cut”. The sound is evocative of the pandemic-era boom of home music production. When before it was a necessity, muckmedicine uses it as a tool to capture solitude and isolation, both physical and mental. “Caspian” was an opportunity to say the things folks would never think to say out loud. To finally release the cacophony of thoughts and find closure in the music. The dedication on muckmedicine’s Bandcamp simply states “for our loved ones”, which could not be a more succinct description for the project. It’s an EP for victims of unrequited love and those who struggle to put into words the complex emotions they feel. Muckmedicine’s pandemic era sound was utilised beautifully in this project. As fitting as it was with the themes of isolation of the EP, it does leave the listener wondering if he’ll evolve his sound further in future projects. His style has been consistent to the point of stagnant with this EP sharing a lot of similarities from his initial EP which was released all the way back in 2020. 5 years later, it can be hard to tell if any time has passed at all. Knowing this, it just makes us even more eager to see what muckmedicine can come up with in his next endeavors. SUPPORT THE ART AND THE ARTIST: Caspian by muckmedicine
EP REVIEW: Wuji Wuji – NOVISION
Written by Adrian Jade Francisco Alt-fusion Wuji Wuji has always been a six-piece defined by motion. Their sonic palette constantly twists, turns, unravels like a loose thread, and is always in flux. From jazz-funk rhythms to the dreamy allure of city-pop, now they’ve peeled it all back, exposing ”NOVISION,” a six-track extended play hot out of the oven: fresh, with a warm, experimental bite. This sophomore release is a deliberate act of destruction and reconstruction, preserving some past elements but shedding the hip-hop influences entirely from “NOSOUL.” Drenched in brooding basslines and reverb-heavy guitar, “Times a Crime” and “Push & Pull” carve the emotional core of the EP. The title track “NOVISION” is to surrender to zero gravity, lost in the space of vocal layers and synths that hum like a distant past. It projects exactly what it needs to: a sense of suspension before the EP concludes, acting as a transition to the second half. “Careless” and “Words Hurt” leave things taut, not unresolved. These tracks lay a pivotal point in the EP, deliberately placing the listener in a state of emotional inertia and reflecting a measured evolution in Wuji Wuji’s sound. “NOVISION” was created during a period of identity struggle for Wuji Wuji, a bold, risky move that marks a turning point in their discography, defying expectations that they would lean further into the city-pop path laid out by 2023’s “Kanluran.” But that shift isn’t a misstep; Instead, it reflects their growing curiosity in production and willingness to explore unfamiliar territory. Wuji Wuji doesn’t just change direction; they embrace uncertainty as part of the process. Whether this marks a sound caught mid-metamorphosis or a new era, “NOVISION” proves that the group admires movement more than comfort, and that’s exactly what makes them worth following. SUPPORT THE ART & THE ARTIST:
EP REVIEW: Clay Birds – a separation from vanity
Written by Anika Maculangan Founded in 2022 by Sam Slater, Italy Jones, Aron Farkas, and Jack Von Bloeker in Mission Viejo, California, five-piece skramz band Clay Birds is onto their sophomore EP, a separation of vanity, a palimpsest which gleams with dissonance and introspection, intimate as it is liberating. separation of vanity begins with “an intuition of morality”, a track that immediately sets you into a dirty basement, sweat flying from slamming bodies of a mosh pit, the heaviness of stomping feet on broken floorboards. The song carries a weathered subtlety, like a memory half-sung on a battered Telecaster; its bitter, wistful texture echoing the kind of late-night conversation you’d only dare to have beneath a spray-painted-over bridge, when it’s too dark to see each other’s faces but too honest to look away. As the EP progresses, Clay Birds’ sound is revealed not in nuance but in imperfection, sharp energy that’s like being pushed off a bike or your heart racing through the seams of a t-shirt. Every song is peeling away, a slash into the emotional undertow of being young. The tracks pose as an unraveling, taking you through the architecture of what has come undone. Each song arrives unearthed, dismantled, plunging you into its entropy. The music doesn’t come out as complete or polished. Rather, it seeps through, and invites people to bask in the mess through the acceptance of being unfinished together. What you hear is reminiscent of cut-short and picked-up conversations from venues, voice calls, and basement shows. It’s built with the rigid kind of faith that only exists between people who’ve gone through the same pain and somehow ended up at the show. Spoken in glances and gestures, in the nods around a circle pit, in the soothing silence when the set ends, it’s a project that insists: you’re not alone. These are not songs sung over a crowd but with them, music which depends on the listener’s openness to feel, to shatter, to mend in tandem. There’s a very real sense of every single line having been written in a room full of friends screaming the same thing at once, each of them taking the words because they’d written them themselves. The EP is not simply a recording of hardship; it’s a recording of being close enough to another person’s agony that it becomes your own. It’s not catharsis by distance but radical empathy. Even with its rough-around-the-edges demeanor, this is hardly a “noise” EP as you might anticipate. The language itself is the heft in this case, pulling on you instead of shoving away, evoking the spirit of unity. This culture of sharedness is at the center of the band. On their Bandcamp, there is a short sentence that reads: “Birds of the same feather flock together.” It’s a slogan, naturally, but something more. It reads as if it’s a manifesto. Clay Birds traces back to a more wide-ranging Gen Z DIY skramz ecosystem where communality is at the backbone of everything. Whether it’s through collaboration or collective effort, it’s in these relationships that the scene is rich, not competitive but cooperative. Pilfer their overlaps with bands like Composition Booklet and Kiowa, who the band shares members with. Not to mention their joint release with Knumears, where the sky meets you. By the same token, there is their commitment to DIY. Take for example their 2022 cover of iwrotehaikusaboutcannibalisminyouryearbook. The clip is didactic in its austerity: a cymbal to which a microphone is duct-taped, an unadorned, visual paean to the spartan aesthetic that characterizes the scene. DIY in this instance isn’t about utility but about authenticity, about not sanding off what makes the music sincere. Although considered one of the younger generations within the scene, Clay Birds continues a philosophy that has defined the scene for decades now: vulnerability, urgency, presence. It’s this devotion that brings their music back to haunt you long after the final note has disappeared, leaving not just sound, but the sense of something real, something felt behind. A band that challenges you to listen with more than your ears, but with whatever is still left of you that aches. Their cries form not chaos but concord, a solemn pact that, despite everything, the kids are alright. Why do I like it? Because it allows me to think out loud, and more importantly, do so alongside others. Not to be heard, but seen. Which reminds me — this is what life is all about. SUPPORT THE ART & THE ARTIST: