Post-pandemic music: Monochrome, Superego, The Garceaus
MANILA, Philippines — What has three years of pandemic wrought? Surely, all the time spent in quarantine and isolation must have helped stew the projects of bands that began in the mid-2010s, the dearth of gigs forcing them to resort to slow cooking. In mid-2023, bands as diverse as Monochrome, Superego and the Garceaus are coming out with latest releases that would surely delight their respective fans if not earn new ones.
Released last May and due for launch in July, Monochrome’s Gray Sky Manila ventures to the far side of shoegaze, with the difference being the five songs here are all instrumentals coming at the listener like a huge wall of sound. Presence of four guitarists doesn’t at all make the sound cluttered, as each of them has a delineated role whether laying down the basic melodic track or first and second leads, the other serving as counterpoint and part reverb.
The Grimaldo couple Donna and Domeng are the rhythmic linchpin around which the guitars revolve, and the title track which footage can be seen on YouTube attests to the band’s visceral power and eye candy, with guitarists the Valenzuela brothers Wesley and Paolo, DM Abanes and Sonia Mendiola. In a write-up by its executive producer that was run by a news website, it appears that Wesley is the common denominator, who brought the band together, the members being his former students either at the University of Santo Tomas or the now shuttered College of Holy Spirit.
The album can be accessed through Bandcamp Manila, for tracks The Future is Uncertain, The Hand that Rules the World, White Fox Project, Between Tranquility and Impending Death aside, of course, from Gray Sky Manila, which may play in the soundtracks of your mind in the days to come, particularly in monsoon weather. The sound simultaneously dense and distinct it almost makes you hold your breath wondering how the band would sound live.
For the most part, they could be reading from music sheets, though not sure if there is formal training. When their producer describes their debut many years in the making as “majestic,” we understand his bias, but then again an objective listener will not find it wide off the mark.
Meanwhile, in Fremantle Western Australia, the hip-hop rap acid house genre bending band Superego is due to release its first full-length album this month, What Are You Hiding From? Formerly known as POW!Negro, Superego is a multiracial collective of migrants’ sons in predominantly white Australia, boasting of at least one Filipino-Aussie in saxophonist Kaprou Lea, while the band itself is anchored by MC Nelly Mondlane by way of Mozambique.
It’s hard to categorize its music where so many things seem to be going on at the same time, including collaborations with under the radar artists Sampa the Great, Sakidasumi, Mali Jo$e. If they sound obscure enough, then you are in the right place, the place to revel in the songs OBS (Outer Body Stranger), Lies and Dpopn. Rap and house have their own synergy and language, playing with samples, punctuations, backbeats, hyper syncopation.
Whatever makes you happy, it’s never too late to put a smile on your face and these young dudes, Gen Z most likely though art rap is more like it, know how to do it. Welcome then the new renegades, the counter hallyu.
Never thought that a news deskman would one day break into song, but this is exactly what the Garceaus do in their second EP, which along with the first out in 2018 bookend the pandemic. Already their first single from the latest is on Spotify, Is That Love? replete with hooks and self-effacing vocals and atmospheric guitars in the coda and fadeout, while drums and bass usher home the proceedings, including such teasing chestnuts as Playing Poker and Queen of Denial.
The Garceaus first EP had similar sly turns of phrase in songs like Bigfoot (Ain’t I Fine Enough) and Facebook Blues, and it becomes obvious that the Garceaus Scott (guitars, vox, and who the copy monitor calls Scotch) and Therese (drums, backing vox) along with Bryan Escueta (guitars) and Franco Chan (bass) are avid students as well executors of the alt-pop song and all its nuances. So, if you find yourself unconsciously humming lines about “walking through the mall with your mind like a wrecking ball” (Is That Love), doesn’t necessarily mean that you are growing old backwards.
Therese has described the latest EP as a labor of love, and I believe her. So, if you find yourself humming it can also mean love’s labors are not always lost, even for the most jaded and faded among us.
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