Formed by musicians from various rock groups, the core line-up includes David Aguirre (Blue Rats; formerly of Razorback) on guitars, Basti Artadi (Wolfgang) on vocals, Louie Talan (Spy, Blue Rats) on bass and Brian Velasco (Razorback) on drums.
Additional musicians were brought in as per their schedule or their fit for a particular song. So some tracks boast a guitar from Jun Lopito, drums from Wolf Gemora, and even violins courtesy of Diwa De Leon of the Makiling Ensemble.
"I was fixated with three name albums like Atom Parts Mother," Artadi elucidates about the project’s title. "We were supposed to call it Brain Salad Surgery but a week before we’d finished recording Wolf [Gemora, drummer for Wolfgang] told me that it was already an album by Emmerson, Lake and Palmer so we dropped ‘Surgery.’"
Wolfgang, Razorback and the Blue Rats have evidently carved out their respective niches in the music pantheon, but like the collaborators say, a band has definite directions to take. Brain Salad is their work beyond these directions, these group tangents.
The origin of the project is a mix of serendipity and synchronicity. Back in June 2000, Artadi had already accumulated material for songs that did not fit into Wolfgang’s format. He discovered that it was the same case with Aguirre.
Aguirre remembers that, "We were already writing songs and thinking about the whole thing already and then came [Wolfgang’s] Acoustica around September."
So the idea for a joint effort was born and gestated for a short delay. The following events were a surprise even to them. Luck seemed to infuse the project from the start.
It was easy, they found out, to round up the other musicians, adjust lyrics to music or vice versa at Pipeline Studios and get it down pat, approach Sony Music’s Wally Chamsay and get him to say yes.
Everything after that was well underway. Even the dilemma of a recording studio was quickly solved by Womb Works, the fledgling company bassist Louie Talan just happened to have recently set up.
"The way I think of it, it’s a way to do something we wouldn’t have been regularly able to do with either Wolfgang or Razorback. If you hear the music, it’s completely different from the directions either bands take," Artadi notes.
Brain Salad is certainly a compelling canvass, a forceful body of work. Like other such efforts its potency is derived from the chemistry of various musicians working under a single banner.
The work of collaborative groups like This Mortal Coil (artists under the alternative label 4AD) and A Perfect Circle (Tool frontman Maynard James Keenan’s side project) are testaments to the range and variety that can be achieved when diverse musicians team up. Definitely, Brain Salad’s songs depart from its musician’s regular bands.
"The songs are all relaxed," Artadi claims, "With the lyrics it was tough that I had written the songs for Wolfgang. So it ended up with this project. The other songs on the album are those Dave wrote that Kevin [Roy, vocalist for Razorback] scoffed at."
"Relaxed" may just be a convenient umbrella term for the 14 tracks, which means there was little to no pressure in the recording and composition of the songs. It was a fresh intake of air for the members whose regular bands have to work with a fixed budget. "Everyone had fun. Everyone was happy," says Aguirre.
Certainly the songs are less loud and, in the main, slower than either Razorback’s glam rock crush or Wolfgang’s brash energy. For example, the carrier single Concept Human has classic rock all over it. It’s stripped sound with a piano and an acoustic outro – the guitars focusing more on the complexity of a given riff rather than a textured attack – make it an extremely appealing and catchy song.
Inches and Malalaman Mo Kaya are blues-infected numbers, complete with musing, meditative lyrics. All through the album one can hear the distinctive styles of the musicians involved – Aguirre’s blues guitar, Talan’s funky bop – threading through Artadi’s catchy, ether-snatched lyrics.
Most of the songs, even on the ballads like She is a Wave and Bulong Mo sa Dilim, still have Artadi’s penchant for the dire, the darkly portentious.
In the anthemic stomp of No Chorus Artadi sings No winners/No losers/No heroes/No cowards/ Just People dying everyday like an existential Bono, and on Tomorrow Knows embodied Life and Death trade off verses in counterpoint then sing a single chorus.
Island Under Siege is a folksy introspective track that just has to be heard to be believed. It exemplifies the amalgam of the collaborators’ best, an indication of what can be achieved with Brain Salad’s ample talents.
Aguirre confesses that he doesn’t see Brain Salad becoming more than a project. "If it gets appreciated, then well and good, ‘cause that’s the only thing we want out of this, that people will appreciate the work we put into it and then that’s it. We don’t want to get famous."
Artadi echoes his sentiment, "We’re not the Brain Salad Band! I never thought of that as our title. I just wanted that to be the title of this album, this project."
So far, Sony’s plans for Brain Salad include releases in Singapore and other countries, three live videos for MTV and a concert in the works. Things are looking good for this not-a-band.
Although there is no second album on the horizon the effort available now may prompt other musicians to form alliances that may not just form a stew of dendrites, ganglia and nerves but also musical directions heretofore not taken by the collaborators.
If it does, we have Brain Salad’s potent recipe to thank.