Sandwich, beers, and ‘Fat Salt & Flame’

MANILA, Philippines -Sandwich’s latest album, “Fat Salt & Flame,” starts out with a four-minute long sound check aptly titled “Fat Salt & Flame.” It’s an instrumental that revolves around a few chords in common time and a simple arrangement. As the song progresses, it gets louder and heavier with Raimund Marasigan, Diego Castillo, and Mong Alcaraz on guitars, Mike Dizon on the drums, and Myrene Academia on bass, coming in and out of the song with variations to their guitar riffs, licks, and drum rudiments.

“A funny thing there is that all the different guitar effects that come out in the whole album have already undergone a test run in that song. The delays, the tremolos, the phasers — we can already check kung bagay na lahat,” Diego explains to us over beers at a dressed-down and shabby watering hole in Barangay Krus na Ligas. “So, once we’ve done that — and sometimes, it can take a while for us to finally get it — we know, okay na ‘yung gig.”

The song sets everything up for the band. It also introduces the listener to one more peculiar trait of the album: “Fat Salt & Flame,” as opposed to one that’s made through the usual method of overdubbing or recording track per track, is a live recording.

“We’ve always wanted to try a different process,” Raimund says, “I guess we’re more confident now. We’ve always been so hesitant kasi may pressure ‘yung recording to play everything right. Actually, na-start ‘yun when Tower of Doom invited Sandwich to play in their Tower Sessions and then they recorded it. Tapos naisip namin, ‘Uy! Kaya naman pala natin, eh!’”

Live recording

While it’s been done by a hundred other artists abroad (like The Doors, Joe Jackson, Red Hot Chili Peppers, to mention a few), doing a live recording is unusual in the Philippines. It’s a marketing risk, considering that selling live recordings isn’t really charted territory, and it can be bloody for a lot of bands. Doing a live recording means playing everything perfectly on cue, synchronized and, save for a few teensy-weensy clicks that are barely noticeable, absolutely flawless.

“Ako, aaminin ko, three albums back, ngangaragin ako kung sinabi sa akin ni Raimund na ‘ite-tape mo ‘to live with everybody,’” Diego adds. “Magkakamali ako, eh. Pero ngayon, I guess with constant playing, we’re finally ready.”

They recorded the album in Tower of Doom and in Sound Creation with Eric Perlas and Shinji Tanaka behind their respective mixing boards. The result is a heavier-sounding Sandwich, alive with raw energy, as if their amplifiers were powering through your ears and the sound they collectively make, penetrating your skin. In the record, they sound as they would in a live performance in 19 East or in 70’s Bistro — a solid, tangible experience that leaves you pleasantly deaf and high. Fat Salt & Flame creates no shield or layer in between the band and the listener. What Raimund, Mong, Diego, Myrene, and Mike play is exactly what you get. (Tirso Ripol also appears in the last song to play lead country blues guitars.)

“We took a lot more time to rehearse, to write and re-write the lyrics in this album,” says Myrene. “Sabi namin, this time, hindi kami magmamadali. Binigyan nila kami ng deadline after deadline after deadline pero inurong lang namin. Sabi namin, hindi, let’s just push it back and push it back until we’re happy. Ginawa namin ‘yun with this one more than any other album.”

“Up to the last recording day, we were re-writing the songs,” Raimund comments.

Tightly knit

“Fat Salt & Flame” is an album tightly knit. Perhaps, it’s an album in its truer form; not just a collection of songs but a complete exploration and exposition of what Sandwich can (and cannot) do, 15 years into the band scene.

Sandwich’s latest album offers the listener an introspective look at how one of our country’s more experienced bands do it. It’s an unpretentious take on how a group that’s grown together as musicians just wants to make music together. In short, “Fat Salt & Flame” presents a band who can say “it’s for the music,” and you can be as sure as hell they mean it.

“Basically, the only limitation we set for ourselves in doing this album was that wala kaming hindi tutugtugin live. Lahat dapat masarap tugtugin live,” Mike says.

These days, the band is into innovative and somewhat philanthropic projects for the OPM rock ‘n roll scene. First is “BBQ Tayo Dyan,” their own production involving a roving caravan/gig with DJs, their favorite bands, and of course, barbeque. It’s a sort of block party where, in Diego’s own words, “you can bring your kids” (because it starts at 4 p.m.) to introduce new music in a new manner to the younger generation. Their other project is to be able to perform the album in its entirety and in sequence in a gig every two months. And in the next two months, they also want to see all their favourite bands playing their albums in full.

Black-and-white

“Fat Salt & Flame’s” album cover features black and white photography by RA Rivera, Dareen Baylon, and Inksurge. We see the band dressed in coat and tie with white light melodramatically drowning portions of the photos. They say that it was a re-enactment of an after-after-after-party at an out-of-town gig: the band in a semi-bare room, overlooking a view of the sea, left to themselves and, perhaps, their thoughts in the aftermath of a long night.

They say that the clothes they wore for that shoot were the ones they wore on the night they played in Hollywood Bowl in LA — on the same stage where The Beatles played in their first US tour, with Ringo himself rotating his drum kit’s stage (that was still there, notes Myrene); where Jimi Hendrix (who Mong and Diego imagined was also still there) played a spectacular performance in ’68.

The images send out a strong message that no matter how big Sandwich has grown through the years, they see in themselves only a group of musicians who merely want to play extraordinarily well. For when I asked what was next for Sandwich, Mong simply replied, “Well, tonight we have a gig at 70’s Bistro.”

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