Written by Noelle Alarcon House music is always a danceable delight; an air of familiarity is constantly present in the candy-colored soundscapes. It just invites your body to move and let the bouncing vibrations thud through your veins and lead you to the dance floor. A rapid attack on all your senses at once, the genre is a vessel for enthusiasm, accented by the occasional syncopated beats and punchy synths. Darla Biana’s debut passion project, ‘Iridescent,’ flickers between the realm of house and the adjacent classifications its wide panorama encompasses; described as the artist’s challenge to herself, created in just three months, it’s an ambitious, headfirst dive into the creativity a deck and a few beats can afford. There’s a template to the genre Biana pursues throughout the album, which makes her vision easy to audibly sketch out–like the minutiae pleasures of driving across cubed, 3D streets in video games from the early aughts or even the trance-inducing techno horns that are emitted from the complex insides of holographic CDs. ‘Iridescent’ is frank and straight to the point, with Biana’s invitations for romance coated in the relaxed lilt of her voice. The record doesn’t need a million ways, nor words, to express self-confidence and infatuation; Biana merely uses the music to punctuate what she means and to begin her sentences. In “Love You Down,” she says it like she means it–she will love you down. Plain and simple. The relaxed harmonies that follow the utterance of her promise and the four-on-the-floor beats are enough signs of the commitment she offers to the table. In accordance with commitment, it’s praiseworthy to note this album’s commitment to pushing Biana’s incredibly specific vibe. There are two interludes in its 33-minute runtime: “Make You Mine,” an appetizing opening that kicks off the album with hypnotizing vocals and pulsing D&B percussion, and “One Day,” a similar, 58-second break that signifies the transition of the album’s subject matter from falling in love to being in love with yourself. For a debut project, ‘Iridescent’ is like a designer’s first sketch that’s come to life–a piece that knows which elements to take from the avant-garde, and what its limitations can bring to life instead of restricting. However, there are instances when the production overpowers Biana’s vocal color, leaving her vocals floating, wandering across the track instead of becoming one with the music. There’s an admirable devotion to staying musically cohesive, yet it could have touched on the adjacent possibilities of exploring dance aside from sticking to similar beats. You can never go wrong with the glitzy, bouncy glamour of house–it just so happens that as versatile as the genre is, it’s also one that needs to embrace its malleability and constantly be kept up with. Darla Biana shows in her debut that she can–she just needs that extra boost, that liveliness brought upon by variety to continue. ‘Iridescent’ is house, definitely–but it’s a “house” that’s a little more lived in, a bunch of tracks to dance in your bedroom to. Support the art and the artist:
Tag: house
EP REVIEW: Bins – The Body Project
Written by Rory Marshall Picture this: a packed dance floor, dim lights, and an intoxicating aroma of smoke and sweat.That’s what’s in store in Pasig-based DJ Bins’ new EP ‘The Body Project.’ This project follows his 2024 debut release “Purgation / On The Upswing” and with it comes a hypnotizing collection of trance-house tracks masterfully crafted to hijack your body’s motor functions, so you can’t help but pick up your feet and move to the rhythm. Spanning across 4 tracks, ‘The Body Project’ showcases the hypnosis of Trance and House, with each song having its own roadmap for body movement. Bins’ shows that the magic of his style of the genre lies in House’s simplicity. Each track keeps it steady with a mellow-paced beat set to 4/4, and ambient synths and sound effects are expertly placed throughout the song to add to the buildups and the comedowns. The atmosphere his tracks create is nothing short of enthralling, and it’s apparent to any listener, regardless of whether they’re familiar with the genre, that Bins knows what it takes to make you lose yourself in the thumping of the beat. Bins has a penchant for soul which he incorporates proudly in his music which is a wonderful yet fitting twist to the House genre. This is seen in tracks like “Body Satisfaction” and “Forever Chemical” with features like a funky guitar riff and psychedelic-esque synths. It’s reminiscent of the glamorous disco scene of the 70s but built for the modern era. ‘The Body Project,’ being only the second ever official release for Bins, is almost unbelievable when considering the quality of the tracks. His sound is a testament to his assuredness and belief in his own style of music production, and really shows how much he planted his feet on the ground and picked a direction for his style. The House is certainly here to stay with talents like Bins in the helm. SUPPORT THE ART AND THE ARTIST: The Body Project by Bins
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
ALBUM REVIEW: crwn – Séance
Written by Louis Pelingen Sometimes, it takes a while for an act to put out their debut record. Case in point, King Puentesmina – also known as crwn – has been a veteran within the local music scene. He is known not just for his ability as a drummer of SOS, but also as a producer and songwriter in his own right. Building up his portfolio under the crwn alias since 2013, carving his identity as a producer whose ability towards crafting beats with soulful textures and enough melodic space for everyone willing to swing by and contribute their vocals on his well-crafted instrumentals. This allowed him to collaborate with numerous artists throughout the years, which only allowed him to expand his open space in creating beats that slot within other genres and is an opportunity to continue refining his skill as a producer – improving upon the textures and the melodies that he has shaped. Since then, he has gotten more acclaim and recognition as a producer, and his production credits have only gotten bigger and bigger, yet it will take a while for a debut album to eventually manifest, up until this year. Séance is the long-awaited debut album that crwn has been working on for 5 years ever since he put out his Orchid beat tape back in 2018, pulling together an assortment of flavorful instrumentals with a full stack of collaborators pulling up vocal melodies within these diverse dance-ready beats. It’s essentially a project that places crwn as the producer who’s able to bring these old and new collaborators together and nestle them to his crafted beats that showcase how much he has gotten better as a producer for a long time. His attention to texture has only gotten fuller and warmer, his attention to mixing is consistent – never taking the clear scope of the vocals and instrumentation, and his melodic sensibilities have excelled – always making the grooves as sharp as they can get. Given the feature-heavy element on the album, there is the looming question of how much these collaborators will be able to stick the landing – whether that be the long-familiar collaborators such as Jess Connelly, August Wahh, and Curtismith, or the more recent collaborators such as LONER, Jolianne, and TALA – fortunately, for the most part, they do manage to aim high. Their writing manages to consistently stay within the simple themes of longing romance and their vocal performances do manage to shine within crwn’s production palette, eventually leading to quality spilling forth. The drum and bass splash of ‘Good Enough’ where Jason Dhakal’s silky vocal touch ups works for the frustrated relationship exit that the song aims for, The 80s house tune of ‘Wish It Never Ends’ where Olympia’s hushed delivery creates a romantic allure in the dancefloor – a characteristic that’s clearly reminiscent of Jessie Ware in a positive way, the bouncy groove of ‘Honey’ that has enough striking melody and space for August Wahh to rap and sing about needing that passionate intimacy with an assured confidence, the slow-building electronica of ‘Waiting For You’ with its buzzier synth melodies, shuffling drum patterns, and acoustic strums that overall coalesce for LONER’s longing delivery for the need to communication to connect through, and the emotive, dreamy melodic swells of ‘Dreaming Of You’ from TALA’s soothing vocals and shuffling instrumentation that ramps up to the potent hook does manage to work, especially with the song trying to put a semblance of comfort towards how love heals and changes people. And while the album is certainly consistently well-produced and put together, it doesn’t always go all the way to the top, mostly due to two things. The small quibbles in certain songs where are certain elements that could’ve been tweaked better: the lyrical flair on ‘Rooftops In Paris’ where Curtismith’s flexing doesn’t carry as much resonance and can be quite disconnected amidst the other songs that touch upon the yearnings or frustrations within relationships, the hook on ‘Another Day’ that can sound quite clunky despite Jolianne’s jumpy vocalisations really giving her all to make it stand out, and the fleeting immediacy of ‘Feel Something’ that could’ve fleshed out a little bit more given how Nadine Lustre’s breathy vocals and the overall melody of the song does come out pretty good. Then there are the big ones that hamper the album back. The shaky momentum where after ‘Wish It Never Ends’, the album structure starts to become more languid, with certain songs such as the pure instrumental ‘Ouroboros’ really putting a dent in the momentum moving forward. But there is also the overall sound that crwn favors to create in the record, full of UK Garage, Drum and Bass, and House elements that he does manage to pull off extremely well, but not exactly in a way that’s remarkable as he could’ve added intriguing ideas within these beats that could allow these already good tracks become spectacular. But as a debut project that crwn perceives as an updated version of his style of production since Orchid, Séance does deliver in that assessment as his ability in putting together melodies, textures, and genre variations has improved, allowing his collaborators to give really good performances within these collection of instrumentals. At the same time, certain issues does take away the sparking flair that the album mostly has, eventually resulting in the project not as striking as it should’ve been. Despite the waning structure, this séance is still able to successfully communicate to the spirits, letting everybody’s sense of yearning keep on growing deeper. Support the art and the artist: