Lirio Salvador’s weapons of choice

At the bar of Penguin Café, sculptor and experimental musician Lirio Salvador — right before playing with his band Elemento which is equipped with chrome Sandata synthesizer and bass created by Salvador himself — is talking about the day he began his flirtation with music and technology.

One day, just after, uh, masturbating, a then-teenage Lirio opened the family’s transistor radio (the old model with a lawanit back-cover, powered by four batteries inserted in a clear plastic tube) and a voice shot out of the static. Cracked, incoherent, oracular.

As the present now will later be past… The order is rapidly fading… And the first one now will later be last… For the times they are a-changin’.  

“Si Bob Dylan ang dahilan ba’t ako na-involve sa music, sa art — na-attract ako,” he recalls, adding that he grew up in a Pasay household during the ’80s with siblings who were either listening to rock or disco and a father fixated on Tom Jones. “Pinatugtog ni Howlin’ Dave ‘yung piyesa sa radyo. Tapos nag-research nako about Dylan. Hindi tungkol kay Robert Zimmerman, kundi ’yung image or character n’yang Bob Dylan. Kaya naiintindihan ko ’yung mga Elvis impersonators, kasi grabe din paghanga ko kay Dylan. Naiisip ko nga minsan kung bakla ako eh (laughs).”

Lirio also became fascinated with found sound. “Tambay din ako sa lagi sa labas, tapos I discovered ’yung tunog ng paligid may ibang dating. Sounds lang sa kalye — pagdaan ng jeep, ingay ng vendor. Napag-tripan ko ’yun. I got entranced.”

That hypnotic outside hum, those lulling noises from the streets he has been trying to replicate in his music ever since. First with his punk band Publiko where he played bass, then with the cross-disciplinary noisecore band Intermidya, and now with avant-garde electronic group Elemento where he plays Sandata synth, bass or sitar instruments.

Publiko was already crossbreeding rap with Dead Kennedys riffs at Red Rocks in Timog in the late ’80s and early ’90s, during a time when hip-hoppers and punk rockers constantly locked horns in Recto and U-Belt, and punks were pulling the hair of trashers during gonzo gigs in UP, Las Piñas and Dapitan. Lirio remembers the cast of castaways during that time: Mike the singer who’d go home in the middle of a set, punks who’d lacerate the seats of jeepneys, as well as “Sid” and “Nancy” who’d shoot up onstage and who died in a hotel after shooting up a sinister container of H. “Nabentahan yata sila ng lason,” Lirio explains. 

The first instrument he did was a sax-like instrument consisting of a lavatory P-trap(?), a trumpet mouthpiece, tubes, and wiring connected to a broken TV set as well as headsets with light bulbs. “Nakakabit sa ulo namin ’yun, electronically-manipulated. Ang title n’ung piyesa ay ‘Midya or Medyas.’ What’s the role of media — mang-sasala ba, o ipapakita lahat?”  

He also took apart a bass guitar borrowed from the uncle of the Publiko guitarist. “Giniba ko ’yung porma, dinagdagan ko ng pickups, tsaka (instead of regular strings) I put springs na ini-stretch para may ibang tunog. Nung makita ng gitarista sabi niya, P’t*ngna, anong ginawa mo d’yan?” Lirio recalls with a chuckle. 

Back when he was still a kid, Lirio had a penchant for deconstructing his toys. Taking apart his toy car, inserting the head of his sister’s doll, attaching a motor, and letting that freaky contraption run. His family had a fishpond so he made bizarre boats. When he got to college, he found out there is a name for those things: assemblage. “When you combine found objects makakabuo ka ng bagong character n’ya.” 

After the deconstructed bass, he crafted the first Sandata instrument made from a jeep estribo, with two strings, and which functions like a bass hegalong. Seeing Morphine and the Presidents of the United States lug around a two-string bass validated his design. “Mga kumbanchero nga isang string lang eh, ayos pa rin.”

Then he started creating guitars, sitars and even synthesizers using bicycle wheel rims and spokes, bicycle gears, car brake pedals, faucets, pipes, sprockets, pickups, glass door handles, assorted alloy and metal fixtures — everything welded together or held together by intricately laid-out nuts and bolts, then spray-painted with chrome like Silver Surfer’s own cache of instruments.

Intermidya was all about creating an alternative to Alternative Music. The instruments Lirio created were designed to emulate the existing sounds in the environment. He didn’t want the sound of any conventional musical instruments. “Para makapag-produce ng bagay na wala sa standard ng music, an extension of what I heard as a kid,” The band played at Club Dredd, Mayric’s, even in provinces. Those were interesting times, what with grunge percolating and Sonic Youth twisting away with artful noises.   

One time in Dredd, as the Intermidya musicians blasted away with their chrome weapons and did spoken-word readings, while the Intermidya painters worked on murals, the people in the audience (who didn’t want to go out of the club and miss an interesting band, but at the same time couldn’t bear the brunt of its uncompromisingly brutal music) stayed together in the middle of Dredd. Like rats huddling together in the middle of the cabin of a sinking ship. “Ayaw nila umalis pero hindi nila matagalan (laughs),” Lirio recalls. “Alam kong hassle ’yung music namin, pero intention ko talaga ’yun.”

He started expanding his Sandata series to include a family of machines — from the “Sandata ni Tatay” bass to the “Sandata ni Baby” violin, from the “Sitardata” sitar to the Sandata synthesizers.

Initially, Lirio got his materials from neighboring junk shops. “Nung un hinihingi ko lang o minsan pinipitik (laughs). Nung tumagal-tagal benebentahan na nila ako.” He’d buy the materials, put them together and have them painted in chrome. Very tedious work. Later on he found out he could buy the same kinds of materials from shops in Binondo — brand new ones instead of rusty secondhand, and at lower prices.  

Intermidya disbanded because its members got regular jobs, went abroad or had other concerns. Lirio formed Elemento in ’96. “Ang goal ng Intermidya ay mang-wasak ng existing musical forms para may isilang na bago. Sa Elemento, gusto kong i-combine ’yung traditional music with experimental music.” Elemento has enjoyed relatively more success with its brand of music (think John Cage, Karlheinz Stockhausen or Terry Riley working in a jazz bar in a distant future with a Blade Runner milieu), playing in big-budgeted gigs for Swarovski and Swatch, gigging at exhibit openings in Singapore or a festival in St. Petersburg in Russia, or appearing in club dates at Mag:net and Penguin Café.  

Tonight at Penguin, Lirio brandishes a Sandata synth (while singing Dylan’s It Ain’t Me Babe), the most challenging instrument to put together. “Madugo, kasi mahirap ’yung electronics. Tapos (if you’re going to use conventional synth effects) mahal. So I used a transistor radio circuit board or computer motherboard for the effects.” What he discovered was that these boards have sounds of their own; it’s just a matter of adding or subtracting circuitry. Even the hum of the power supply can be manipulated.

How did he figure out these things? “Experiment-experiment lang n’ung una. Ang daming beses ko na ngang na-kuryente eh, hindi na mabilang. Dagdag-bawas ng capacitor and resistor sa circuit board to get different sounds,” he says in explaining his equation. Then he discovered that there is a community in the States doing circuit-bending — experimenting on walkie-talkies, toy keyboards, etc. The Moog, Lirio says, was created using the principles of circuit-bending. Looking at the impressive instruments he put together by hand, power tools and the mania of a mad scientist, I dare not dispute his assertion.

Besides, the Sandata instruments are now considered as sculptures and exhibited not only in The Drawing Room on Metropolitan Avenue in Makati, but also in galleries in New York, Beijing, and Singapore, among other countries. (A side note: Two weeks after listening to Elemento play at Penguin, I would meet up with Lirio at the Drawing Room to see other versions of the Sandata. I’d see only a handful, since the rest would already be in crates and ready to be shipped to China and the States. And it all began with a transistor radio that used to blast Bob Dylan.)

“My idea is to make art a part of our day-to-day existence — na puwede siyang maging intimate, become part of us,” he explains, adding that the musical instrument can be an extension of ourselves. “You could express yourself with it. Other artworks kasi masyadong bounded, wall pieces lang. I am too literal so for me iba rin kung nahahawakan mo ’yung artwork, mas human.”

Lirio says while other artists all over the world also create their own musical instruments, there is always something different about his Sandata series. “Gusto kong dating parang Bob Dylan,” Lirio concludes. “Daming folk singers n’ung panahon niya pero iba pa rin si Dylan. Ang gusto ko yung stubbornness niya. Not particularly his music; it’s the attitude. Ako, hindi titigal sa paggawa ko ng Sandata. Parang pagkain sa kin to eh. Ito ’yung magic ng creativity.”

Who knows? In the future, musicians will probably be brandishing chrome instruments made by their own hands. Just like Lirio Salvador. That can’t be too far off. For the times they are a-changing.