Too cool for rock stardom

MANILA, Philippines - Pow Martinez has made a center of himself. On the shelf of mag:net Katipuan in the mid-2000’s, a self-titled album settles there, not even waiting for Godot. “My music-making is indulgent, arrogant, selfish,” he claims. “I actually like the obscurity.” With this magic word, he may have outdone the rest who claim cool nonchalance. After all, his narrative is one that involves re/claiming (interests) and new collaborators — very much the sort of partnerships hip-paparazzis may fail to anticipate. Even the merit/demerit of drugs on Pow’s practice earns a typically good subterrenean story. But ‘til when can he stretch it before he falls prey to culturati hounds who’d only to be willing to knight him into underground royalty?

Pow went serious with music in 2003 when he found himself on the rocks with visual art. On his way out of the college of fine arts, he turned to workshops in the college of music. Inclined to electronic music, his first experiment involved tinkering with guitar effects using a toy keyboard where he discovered the sonic sequences of knob tweaking. Music school was likewise where he met the first kindred soul in Tengal Drilon. Together, they formed the avant rock band EAT TAE in 2004.

As Nasal Police, Pow Martinez and Ria Muñoz decided to fuse what they pretty much knew at the time to accomplish more complex compositions that involved developing particular sounds, loops and even objects. Collaborating with dance performances tested their technicality but also established an affinity for chaos and chance. The year 2005 and early 2006 likewise cast them, as a duo and singularly, before a wider audience. These years saw them ubiquitous in alternative spaces and ocassional events of performances.

Pow continued manning the electronics in Trojan Whores from 2007 to 2009 with Sam Kiyoumarsi at the guitar and later on Tom McWalter who provided the vocals.

As a solo act in between and after thesis team-ups, Pow began hoarding, a consequence of an obsession to create and/or to evolve. Besides collecting drum machines and other instruments, he combined them with objects, applying a DIY punk aesthetic to the production of his works. In 2007, he fashioned what he calls his “alter ego” — Nun Radar, which is purely electronic and directed towards a pop touch and melodies.

The interface between music and drugs is dug out at the roots of Pow’s experimentation. Ultimately, the situation of party and other plateaus of ecstasy usually involve not just one component — music or drugs — but both. And for Pow “hindi lang siya party time.” He latches on to what he felt was a profound aural experience and dispenses it.

“That’s why it’s difficult to say that the effects of drugs are merely corrosive,” Pow says. He goes on to say that the type of electronic music he is inclined to listen to and make involves consensual tripping — the very sort what Pow thinks “na kaya sakyan nang matagal” by those who choose to experiment. Pow’s sound pieces are directed at liberating boundaries of music. Because he means to emulate the mindf*** that is consequent of mixing drugs and music like one would recklessly mix drinks while already at the peak of inebriation, his work disorients, implodes and stretches the states of of stepping outside of yourself. Comprised of minimal drones, Pow’s works have noise at the heart of them. He isolates certain noises, prolongs thems by reverberation and repetition and frames them in moment improvisation.

Rather than ripples, the sound art scene as Pow knows it causes rare bubbles that burst. They are, in the meantime, marginal enough to stay in the margins. Clubs do not know what to make of them; artsy promoters lump them in with perfomances. Perhaps this is what drew Pow to keep on with his music making — the whole alienating energy of both the music and the community right now. For him, it always seems “like a solo show” — the kind that doesn’t really matter if anybody shows up. Somehow, he prefers to move around this sort of self-indulgent realm. After all, he knows that with the complete satisfaction he gets from making music even just for himself, “‘Di ka pwede sumikat as a rock star.”

* * *

Please check out http://projectslost.wordpress.com to see more of Pow’s art and other projects.