22 January 2009
I’m almost ready to finalize the mixes, so I thought this would be a good time to reflect on my original plan of the album.
My framework for an album is governed as much by what I like as what I don’t like. I’ve said earlier that the greatest assets of Peryodiko were Vin’s elegant songs, and the band’s virtuosity. But what I haven’t mentioned yet is that in the past couple of years, I have grown increasingly bothered by the synthetic, overproduced style of too many popular albums. The quest for the elusive “perfection” has robbed too many recordings of the dynamic qualities that makes music what it is. For example, loudness compression has become so severe that most recordings sound squashed and flat. Tempos and pitches have also been so “quantized” that too many performances have become mechanical and robotic. This is why, for example, my favorite albums from this past year is “Bitch For Change” from Reklamo, and the maiden album of the Bembol rockers. These albums may have a few technical and technological issues, and lack the polish of their more commercial counterparts. But I am drawn to them because the music, performances, and recordings are alive, vibrant, and unapologetically human.
When I first met the members of Peryodiko in 2007, I told them that I wanted to record them “live”, like in classic pre-1970‘s jazz recordings. Vin resisted this all the way, saying he wasn’t ready for, or capable of this kind of approach. My compromise was that although we wouldn’t exactly record that way, I would at least try to make it sound like it. Most rock connoisseurs would automatically anticipate this to result in a “raw” performance/recording. But that’s not the right adjective. As musicians, Abe, Kakoy, Simon and Vin are too “refined” to be considered “raw”. In art, there is a grey area between what is considered “raw” and “polished”. Japanese aesthetics uses the concepts of “wabi-sabi” to marry the quest for human refinement, and the organic imperfection of nature. I haven’t come across a similar term in Filipino, but anyone who has worked seriously in Philippine art knows a similar concept operates in our culture. In my productions, I call this the “edge”, and I always try to find a source for this in my works.
I’ve heard of one comment that the pre-mixes lack some elements of common “mainstream” pop records. I lost one nights’ sleep worrying whether I should succumb to such commercial conventions. Even our engineer Shinji initially felt intimidated by the fact that there were so few tracks in the arrangements compared to other commercial albums, and wondered how he was going to make the mix sound competitively full. But while I fully understand where these concerns are coming from, it is exactly these canonical issues that are the source of my dissatisfaction with too many current albums. Unfortunately for the industry, the aesthetic in me is usually more stubborn than the capitalist in me. My academic colleagues believe that art is an area of contestation and discourse. Although this philosophy exposes a work to criticism, it also challenges those whose critique remain based on canonical complacency. So I remain firm in my original framework, and this is not going to change anytime soon.
The result is an album that for the most part is refined but organic, finished but unfinished, and perfect in its imperfections. It is complete and full in its simplicity, and free from the burdens of excess and overproduction. The beauty of this album is not merely what is immediately apparent, but also what the listener ultimately discovers, both in the work as well as in himself/herself during the experience. There is more than enough space in this album to encourage this kind of discovery.
