Interview with a Yeti

Kristo Babbler "enters the cave" with Ponchie Buenavista to chat about his journey from a 90s era grunge band frontman to his current role as the chief composer behind the ambient rock group Encounters with a Yeti.

Kristo: It says in your band’s bio that Encounters was conceived in 1998 but was not formed until 2005. Why the long hiatus? What led to this extended hibernation?

Ponchie: I just indulged in the time-honoured, frowned-upon tradition of bumming around to find oneself, doing mind-numbing activities some of which I would not recommend. Also, all of us in EWAY were more or less focused on the more mundane but necessary aspects of life then. Since 1998, I had already been dabbling into instrumental music not because I intended to but because I couldn’t write decent enough lyrics to those compositions that I would consider worth listening to.

Kristo: What happened along the way? Did your taste in music change? Who were your main influences, if any?

Ponchie: Personally, it was a period of initiation into other forms of music. Prior to that, I was in a grunge band called Pedro’s Cannabis and my musical tastes were rock, new wave, grunge and alternative music from which I was reluctant to gravitate away. But I got intrigued by the explosion of electronic dance music that was impossible to ignore, and to counteract the frenetic chaos of that, I sought more subdued forms of music and became engrossed with classical music, standards, lounge and movie soundtracks. In conceptualizing EWAY, movie soundtracks were very influential.

Kristo: So what movie soundtracks were you listening to?

Ponchie: My brother and I watched a lot of films then; we were regular patrons of this VHS rental place that would have questionably acquired copies of classic and independent movies that weren’t shown here. I was fascinated with the brilliant movie scores of Michael Nyman, John Murphy and Ennio Morricone to name a few. There was a phase when I solely listened to film soundtracks and scores because it seemed better listening than radio’s formulaic, genre-defined playlists. Movie OSTs to me were like quality mixtapes that proved to be better for casual listening. A Cameron Crowe or Wes Anderson movie soundtrack made you explore by introducing or reminding you of artists you would never have had an opportunity to hear if you solely relied on mainstream radio programming. The late Mark Linkous was also a huge influence. He was always unconventional in his approach to his music and I was very much drawn to that.

Kristo: How did the concept for this band evolve? Were you aware at the start what sort of sound you wanted, or did it come about gradually? And at what point did you decide there would be no vocals?

Ponchie: We have always had this spirit of experimentation when it comes to our music that it probably would have been natural for us to move from the music we used to make to the kind that we are making now. We didn’t consciously think we wanted to sound a certain way. We just loved playing music and possessed a good enough sense of humour to actually try out musical ideas that better musicians would probably find ridiculous. We also wanted to grow and constantly reinvent ourselves. It was easy to do because we had by then accepted the fact that nobody would really buy into it. Nobody knew us; we hardly had gigs so there wasn’t any pressure to please anyone so we were free to experiment. There wasn’t a specific moment when we decided to have no vocals, we just got together and realized it was possible to go with this music we were making with the tools on hand.

Kristo: Your music has been described as ambient, expansive, cinematic—so what’s the creative process like? Where do you get the inspiration for songs? Does a melody just pop up in your head, or is it more collaborative, like do you get a bunch of guys to jam with you?

Ponchie: Inspiration is usually derived from a situation or a moment one might find oneself in. There are melodies always playing around in everyone’s head that just needs the right situation for it to take on more definition. Say there’s this one bar riff floating around in your head; day in, day out, that ghost of a melody is just there. You hum it endlessly but there’s no resolution. Then your girlfriend breaks up with you. On that exquisitely sad drive home, that melody suddenly takes shape.

Kristo: Uh-huh, I see. So it’s sort of like an antecedent to what happens in your life almost.

Ponchie: Ordinary events can also be a source of creativity: Ross made Brute Canal after undergoing a dental procedure; I made Tube Explodroid after my amp blew up at one of our gigs. One of us composes a song and hands it over to the rest of the band for them to augment in whatever way. It’s more focused that way with one creating a canvass and everyone adding a layer to create texture. It’s necessary to have direction otherwise it’s just one endless mess of a jam although we do rely heavily on a plethora of eureka moments and pleasant accidents. Once done, we test it out on live sets then tweak it as we go along. The songs are like Frankenstein monsters that keep evolving. Even the songs already on the album continue to change when played live which can be quite annoying since you never really know what version you’ll adopt or if what was committed to tape is still good from what it is now.

Kristo: The fact that you had no vocals or frontman as such must have made it a lot more difficult to connect with your audience, or even build one, particularly in the Philippines, the land of the soulful ballad singer or rock superstar. Do you find though a growing appreciation for your music in the venues where you play? How do you connect with the audience in that situation?

Ponchie: Right from the start, connecting with the audience was never our concern. It may sound selfish but we just wanted to play and make music and couldn’t care less if people would take to it or not. We considered the music more for ourselves than for anyone else. We are pleasantly surprised, though, to find people more engaged with our live sets now. Maybe it’s because the music has no lyrics that more people are learning to relate given they don’t have to figure what it’s about; they just adopt it as a soundtrack to what they are feeling at the moment. I think we connect with the audience via a subtle musician-listener collaboration. We’ll play something; you try to make it relevant for you. It’s very subjective. If that isn’t the case, maybe it’s because we have a bandmate who dances very well while playing onstage. 
(mild laughter)

Kristo: This year you are finally going to release your first album. That’s nearly seven years since you formed. I guess, the question begs itself, why so long?

Ponchie: It’s not the album but more the journey to where we find ourselves now that took so long. The album itself took a mere (!) three years to make. I’m actually quite ashamed of our work ethic and having to constantly tell people inquiring about the album that it’s coming out soon but ultimately not delivering.

Kristo: Sort of like the Sistine Chapel…

Ponchie: But what can we do? Everyone had work and could only commit a handful of hours in a week to this endeavour. It was very difficult to find that moment when everything would be right emotionally and mentally in each of us to record a particular song considering that each song was composed while in a certain mental state. You can’t just go “Okay, let’s record this sad song!” when you just won the grand prize of a raffle that morning. We’re not that good. There was also that little perfectionist in everyone that would always manifest when reviewing a mix. We had to learn to separate genuine concerns from nitpicking just to get things moving along. Recording and mixing in different places just to capture a mood for certain songs also didn’t help speed things up. You can just imagine Fran’s frustration with us (editor's note: Fran Lorenzo, co-producer of their album).

Kristo: During this time, your audience has steadily, I should say visibly, grown both in size and in their acceptance. To what would you attribute that growth?

Ponchie: I really wouldn’t know what to attribute it to. Maybe the accessibility of a lot of music via the internet has helped in the maturity of the Filipino listener’s taste, or they have become more appreciative and forgiving. I would be lying if I said getting signed to Terno Recordings didn’t have anything to do with it. Being picked up by Terno is like an endorsement; a credible institution vouching for you.  

Kristo: It must feel great now, but there must have been times when you felt like the unappreciated artist of the Terno set. What was going through your head during the band’s early years?

Ponchie: We never really felt underappreciated. Despite having collective glossophobia or the fear of public speaking, we’ve always been a self-assured bunch. There’s a certain degree of confidence that comes from accepting earlier on that the band wouldn’t amount to anything so those early days  of being perceived as “some noisy band” in Terno Inferno was quite pleasant for us. No pressure and you get to have free beer while watching the other fantastic bands. Who knows, maybe we are still perceived that way.

Kristo: How has that experience fed into the making of this album? Will it stick to the formula you have created, or is there any subtle tinkering here and there going on? Do the songs on the album achieve a certain kind of narrative arc?

Ponchie: The songs on the album are far different from how they are when performed live, and it’s only proper. The album is an opportunity to hit an ideal whereas the live performances are more the reality. We wanted the listener to have a completely different experience from listening to the album and watching a live gig. The potential of recording is limitless so we went with that while also applying certain limitations to challenge us otherwise we’d probably eat up 104 tracks on one song and end up with something resembling white noise. There is a narrative but I wouldn’t let on much except to say that it is dependent on the listener. If you are the listener, the theme will be apparent once it hits you when you’re in the right moment.

Kristo: Do you think it is still possible to do an album with a continuous flow or narrative these days, given the way that people consume music, i.e. one MP3 at a time, like we no longer listen to albums as such but to tracks on shuffle mode?

Ponchie: I believe that all records beg to be done with a narrative or, at the very least, with a deliberate flow in mind. It encapsulates a moment in the band’s life. An album is a story. It could be a deliberate story like The Who’s Quadrophenia or a background story like Spacemen 3’s The Perfect Prescription which was based on their collective drug experience. It makes listening to albums more exciting because you are getting some sort of insight aside from pleasure. We spent a lot of time working on how our record would play out; conducted many a listening session just to see if the track arrangements would hold the listener’s attention. We can only hope we did good. An album need to be coherent otherwise it would just be a compilation of songs susceptible to butchering for the mp3 player.

Kristo: That’s exactly what I meant.

Ponchie: That’s why I love records and tapes. When you play those, you have to sit through the whole album warts and all. There’s no button or remote control that will enable you to skip tracks you don’t like. You have to physically move the needle if you want to skip something and that deviates from the pleasure of just lounging in a chair and listening to a good record. It’s even worse for tapes. You have to fast forward and hope you stop it at the right moment which never happens. Though the pros outweigh the cons, listening to songs rather than albums is one disappointment with regards to the format of compact discs and the internet. Some listeners develop attention deficit disorder of the music grade which gives some artists a license to be lazy. It would be rare now to find records in the calibre of Steely Dan’s Aja which was so good that you couldn’t skip one single track, but I’m sure they’re out there if you know where to look and who to ask. You could say that earlier on I did profess a liking for original movie soundtracks which might be glorified mixtapes, but there’s no contradiction. They were good starting points for graduating into full length albums. Besides, an OST has a narrative: the movie.

Kristo: What about the aesthetics of the album. Have you settled on a title and cover design? Do these things matter, in your opinion?

Ponchie: We have discovered that, much to our amazement, coming up with an album design and a title is equally as hard and frustrating as recording the songs, if not more so. I used to think that those things didn’t matter and that the most important thing is the body of work but once you have gone through the recording process, it’s sort of a cop-out if you don’t put forth some decent effort with packaging. Recording is like having a child, I guess. Once the baby is out, you don’t want to dress it up in rags even if that worked for the prophets.

Kristo: Finally, the burning question of the day is, what are you doing for your album launch, and when will it be?

Ponchie: To quote the bard: beware the ides of March!


-End-

Encounters with a Yeti members are: Ponchie Buenavista - guitar, Ross Pleyto - bass, Caloy Tiangco - drums, Niño Valmonte - guitar, Des Lawas - piano/synths, Ramon Rivera - guitar

Encounters with a Yeti is signed under Terno Recordings.

Images courtesy of Carlo Reyes