A-stigmatics, pare!

“Here’s a song, baby, and I sing it to you” goes the opening line of the opening track from Straight Down the Bitter End the freshman album of the concept band Stigmatics under Terno Recordings the indie outfit of Toti Dalmacion which is based in the Philippines (hence the flag in the photo).

The duo is comprised of Grandi0s0, musical alchemist who manages the instruments and vocalist funb0y. With a name like theirs, you truly wonder what sort of scars both psychological and spiritual they intend to expose. No wonder these evil geniuses prefer to use stagenames in lieu of their true identities.

An unexpected discovery

The Bernadettes opening their set at Saguijo.

With an opening that sounds like the BMX Bandits’ Serious Drugs spiked with some serious attitude and irresistible popish hooks, and a bridge that's reminiscent of the Jesus and Mary Chain, The Bernadettes will leave you chanting along during the chorus of Let’s Make Babies.

I caught them serendipitously during one of my nocturnal adventures while visiting in Manila. Their mini-set started off with a four-and-a-half minute period of silence. Afterwards, the band simply erupted with a flurry of songs which I thought at first were covers. I was delightfully surprised to learn that they weren’t.

The best thing about The Bernadettes is captured in this single. Simple. Direct. Immediate. They’re a band you feel like you’ve listened to for years and years. The gratification is instant. No need to churn them over and over to dig their vibe.

Editor's note: This excerpt from a review posted on the eponymously named blog of @Baudelairean originally came out on December 31, 2010. See the rest of it here.

Time for some strange luvin’

                                          

It is not that hard to picture the lads of Dr StrangeLuv a band out of Laguna in the "greater"part of the Greater Manila Area, trudging along the terrain of their suburban environs like the mythological Sysyphus moving back and forth from home to school to mall to church and so on for all eternity. Sissypuss their debut album is no doubt inspired by such travails.

The duo comprised of the “obnoxious brothers” Grandioso and El Scum aka “the Ingenious Bastards” are the strangest thing to come out of Manila’s outer rim of late. It is out in suburbia where bands like this (Pavement that quintessential alternative rock band out of Stockton, California being a prime example), comprised of perfectly normal kids isolated from the city-center, with loads of time on their hands, are able to lazily stumble into a sound that teases out the mundaneness, absurdity and sinister aspects of middle class existence.