Out of the boom box

I consider myself a lyrics kind of guy. You know, the sort of listener who gets an auditory rise when Mariah Carey slips a big word or two into her songs (“incessantly”, “nonchalant”—okay, so she got me to look ‘em up), who can appreciate the dime store metaphors in a Bon Jovi classic (“This Romeo is bleeding...”), and who digs Vampire Weekend’s Oxford Comma simply ‘cause of its anal grammarian-saluting title. I like a little sense in my sounds, basically, but after witnessing the aural antics of cirque du sonic band The Dorques one random rock bar night, I may have reassessed my preferences in music.

Dorque Night

Among a lineup of bands that allow you to rest your elbows on the bar counter and imbibe your beer with some after-work existentialism, The Dorques seemed to urge otherwise. There was hulking lead Dorque Joffy Cruz littering skipping-at-the-park riffs with glorious gibberish (“ching, ching, ching ha-ha...walis tingting”); key broad Nina slinging Japanese phrases around while laying twinkle fingers on her Yamaha; and dandy bassist Knell keeping guitarist Tani’s caustic electric currents grounded. And like a pied piper in the thinking yuppie’s nightspot I was idling at, it was as if Joffy and his merry band of sound trippers had slipped Ritalin into my rum and coke, gotten me to leave my pseudo-pensiveness at my seat, and prompted me to clap my hands and say, “I don’t know what the f*ck I’m hearing but it’s pretty damn infectious.”

“I don’t care about lyrics when I listen to music. I just hope it’s catchy and I like the sound. It’s kind of childish music, I guess. We just wanna have fun and we don’t want to take ourselves too seriously,” says Cruz a month or so after that gape-inducing gig that got a bunch of dull-collared Mag:Net High Street patrons (including myself) to get all bobble-headed and schoolgirl snappy over their music.

We’re at the call-centered realm of Eastwood City, a building or two away from the international fluency outpost where Cruz gives his mostly French students English tutorials via video conferencing. Cruz, relentlessly nonchalant (ooh, thanks Mariah) with his uniform of roomy tee, knee-length athletic shorts, and shin-high socks is a walking contradiction towards the music mainstream; a kindler of the local scene’s intensifying indie flame. There’s the fact that he and his band mates can throw on costumes — a rice farmer hat here, a cow suit there — and churn out whatever-goes tunes that the cubicle-weary will undoubtedly bop their heads to. But there’s also the do-it-yourself determination of running an independent record label while he’s sloughing the haw-haw-haw off the tongues of a couple of Frenchies.

“Dork-fringe-rock,” as the Dorques attempted to label the rapturous rock they rolled two years ago, is as music-marginal as it sounds, which may have caused a bit of a snag in bagging the band a record deal. After Cruz dispatched a demo to several labels, he realized that what people couldn’t quite label didn’t belong on the same musical conveyor belt most local acts tried to get on. “It’s kind of contrived—like, I always thought our music couldn’t be the same sort of music we hear. Also, we’re not just targeting the Philippine market. There’s only so much you can do here, especially with our music. We’re not gonna be as popular as Sandwich or Imago ‘cause of our style, I think, so it wasn’t worth it,” says Cruz, who decided to pitch a tent for other sound-skirting acts like the Dorques through his own label, Kindassault Records. “It’s easy to start one, really. You just have to think of a name and you’re pretty much done.” 

Never going with the heard

The name Kindassault, like Cruz’s other creative concoctions, built up in the wax of his ears. “I was kind of drunk one time and I was watching Star Wars and I thought I heard Darth Vader say ‘kind assault’—I don’t know, it was probably ‘we’re gonna make an assault’ or something,” he says, a chuckle drifting into his Cheshire cat grin.

‘Course, that muddled approach to auditory perception also contributed to the band’s beats; an obscure French track Joffy once heard put to interpretation in the Dorques’ Le Metronome, where a bunch of French phrases he plucked from a Lonely Planet book are jumbled upon meandering guitars. Or in Supercool, where the multilingual madness blends into a breezy drive of a melody — a power soda pop ballad that bottles love vibrations with a lot of isotonic nonsense. And then there’s Jadariko 44488, an onomatopoeia-packed ear-job that’s juvenile yet evolved at the same time — what’ll, upon first listen, probably elicit a huh that might just delve into an ahh.

In an effort to get people to hear a little differently, Cruz decided to compile his first CD of indie cuts from a couple of local acts (Spazzkid, Endofcontracts) and 12 from around Asia. Along with The Dorques’ Jadariko are what Cruz has ex-track-ted from the let-anything-thrive realm of MySpace or through their boundary-hurdling global gig circuit; some of these bands returning the music missionary favor and dropping by our island to play some far-out tunes as well. “Miami did really well here ‘cause they’re so exotic, you know—a violin thrown in and all,” says Cruz of the Japanese pop electronica group also found on Kindassault’s first compilation. “But a few of the other bands like Panda No Panda and Mr. Eggs weren’t as successful over here. See, that’s the thing, we need more people who want to see bands they’ve never heard of. We need more open-minded people, you know.”

Indie band indie-mand

While Cruz can mouth off on having to play at the same roundabout of rock bars (Saguijo, Route 169, Mag:Net), the bemusement of the Pinoys who catch his shows, and the overall lack of noise the local indie music scene is making, the fact that The Dorques can turn the wacky factor up alongside your standard slew of MTV-checked bands is proof the soundscape of strangeness in the Philippines is broadening. “We couldn’t have survived 10 years ago —noway. It’s not like before when all you had was NU 107 and you couldn’t really get on the Internet and listen to all these bands and downloads,” says Cruz like a rightful vigilante of today’s indie-preneurial spirit.

A decade ago, it was certainly unheard of to have a weekly radio show where everything played was, well, unheard of (Kindassault Radio on 105.9); where a Swedish-Aussie band can come by Saguijo and spread their rock gospel (Poubelle International’s performance at the Dorques’ debut album launch last night); and where Joffy can get his one-man show on the road, even if it’s for an audience of five. “It’s definitely a challenge to get people to get drunk and crazy for this kind of music,” says Joffy, who, apart from outsourcing Asian bands for an indie music fest next year, plans to send the Dorques’ second album out to a small label in France.

With the anything-goes atmosphere of music for this download-driven generation, indie here could mean ubiquity out there. Still, even with the hoots and hollers the Dorques get over yonder — hot groupies slipping Knell the tongue, a rare-requested encore at a gig in Hong Kong, and a few fan invites to play in countries as off-the-band-track as Nepal — there’s some enlightenment that can come out of being a sort of outcast in their sound space. “I think it’s good that we’re here. We get to observe the music from our perspective here in the Philippines, whereas if we were in the States, we’d just blend in,” Joffy explains. “Here, we can sort of make an effort to stick out.”  

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Get indie-enlightened at www.kindassault.com and www.thedorques.com.