‘Falling for Mermaids’ & the music that keeps silverfilter going

The desiccating heat tells me that it’s time to hit the beach. Or lounge in the cool embrace of a mountain resort. Or simply bask under the shade, the elusive breeze making love to my face.

With summer wanderlusts in my mind, a playlist is never far behind. Music plays so much a role in our lives that every occasion is celebrated with a beat. Arcadia, the recent album of Filipino electronica artist silverfilter, is my chillax company now. It’s my summer squeeze but I know I will be chilling and kicking with it for a long, long time even after the season of sun is momentarily written off the sand.

“Arcadia, during the Renaissance, meant paradise, or an unspoiled, harmonious wilderness. It also means any real or imaginary place offering peace and simplicity. This was exactly how I wanted the album to be. Often times, when I say it’s a chill-out album, a lot of people automatically talk about the water, blue skies, beach, etc. Of course, I see the relation in it, but I wanted the album to reflect differently and that is how Arcadia and its meaning fit in perfectly,” says silverfilter.

silverfilter is Cyril Sorongon, a Communication Arts graduate of UP Los Baños. His life’s excursion into music was paved early on when his late sister influenced their mother to get the 12-year-old Cyril a guitar. Since then, he has never stopped making music. He plays for his own band but silverfilter, who broke into the industry in 2004, fashions his own brand of music by making his electronic albums. It does not bother him that a music artist like him is not much felt in an industry that gives premium to voice rather than pure instrumental music. He’s just joyful and grateful to make his own brand of music. 

“Electronica or electronic music is used interchangeably as an umbrella term for music made with electronic instruments like synthesizers, computers, etc. It covers the full spectrum from full on-dance tracks to something more chill-out or lounge-y like my album,” he explains, adding that his album Arcadia was made possible with the help of Ayala Land Premier.

In Arcadia’s 10 tracks, synthesizers are used generously to relax the senses, to give the mind a break to look back to the past or meander in the future and be back again to what is extant. The electronica artist also sparingly, if not faintly, uses some organic instruments like trumpets and percussions to exact a mood, to emphasize a laid-back lifestyle, to pronounce the need to chill out and reflect unmindfully.

For example, a track titled Shores has the calling sound of the sea in it that can really paint a picture in your head. Highlights are the classical guitar solo and the mallet-type sounds. 

The soundscapes running through Falling for Mermaids will take you underwater with sounds of bubbles, undercurrent movement and a lot of different sound effects that somehow tell a story about a human falling in love with a mermaid.

Smooth Enjoy is a lounge-y mix of jazz and funk highlighted by a steady brass solo that just lifts the tune.

Zanzibar, on the other hand, perhaps characterizes the wanderlust in silverfilter because the track title is named after the place in Africa. Listen to Zanzibar and it may just be the soundtrack to your beach paradise.

The cut titled Bangka Ride to the Sunset is the perfect closer to the album that literally brings images of a boat floating into the sunset.

There’s a lot of “floating” feeling in Arcadia. But ask silverfilter what makes his spirit float and he will tell you: “My family — my wife Bernice, my two-year-old daughter Olivia. I make music for them. I want to make it good in the music industry because I want to be able to provide more for them.”

“I grew up in a family that taught us to work hard and to earn things and not simply have them served to us. I guess this is also the reason why I tend to do as much as I can on my own, because we didn’t have the luxury to pay for services, but I had the willingness to learn so I learned as much as I could in the different disciplines that I wanted to get into. Unfortunately, others see it as me just going on my own, when in reality, I grew up trying to do things and not expecting others to do it if I wanted something to happen in my life. Of course, I welcome any help I could get, but I won’t wait for it and delay my goals,” says silverfilter, who also dabbles into DJ-ing. silverfilter becomes Cyril when he maintains a day job as a web designer, graphic artist and sound engineer rolled into one. He is a freelance music producer who became a finalist in the 2013 Philpop Music Festival for arranging the music for Joey Ayala’s song titled Papel.

silverfilter’s Arcadia is an ode to the soul of electronica. Each track is made with a bottomless purpose to satiate a need for chill-out music that excites and lulls the mind; that allows it to enter another realm, a dimension that is both kickass and divine.  Like an all-instrumental sonnet, Arcadia is at once meditative and celebratory. silverfilter is a high priest in the church of electronica. His homilies are carried out in the synthesizers of his music, which, in its very core, is also an OPM on its own.

silverfilter, or Cyril Sorongon, knows by heart that music is the passion that keeps him going. “And because of music, I always walk in love,” he ends with a happy squint in his eyes.

(Check out silverfilter on www.silverfilter.com. Visit Facebook.com/silverfilterofficial and @silverfilter on Twitter and Instagram.)

(For your new beginnings, e-mail me at bumbaki@yahoo.com. I’m also on Twitter @bum_tenorio and Instagram @bumtenorio. Have a blessed Sunday!)