09.24.2009
RIVERMAYA: HEAVENWARD
THE ‘MAYA MEN GIVE THE LOWDOWN ON “CLOSEST THING TO HEAVEN,” THEIR LATEST
Aldus Santos: How has your musical process evolved since Jayson joined? What roles—apart from singing, obviously—does he play in the band now, a couple of years after winning at the televised auditions? For instance, how is he during song arrangement and recording?
Mark Escueta: In all “generations” of Rivermaya, arrangement has always been the playground and the happy-war. Arrangement is what turns a song into a Rivermaya song. Ganyan naman sa lahat ng banda, ‘di ba? From day one, Jayson became part the team, in every sense of the word. We all know how to give way, make way or pave the way for each others' ideas. He sings lead on nine out of ten songs on this album, with Japs singing the last. You'll definitely see Jays playing more guitar in the live setting.
Japs Sergio: He is slowly but surely becoming more comfortable with everything. He is still in the early stages of the learning process in the studio and in the songwriting department, which is good. I mean the guy is twenty yrs old and the vocalist of a band that’s been around for fourteen—fifteen?—years so I guess that’s a shit load of work already trying to adjust to that.
Mike Elgar: Yes, he’s part of the arrangement and of course the recording process. He wrote a number of songs which we are saving for the next album.
A.S.: Buhay was a melting-pot of sorts, genre-wise. Is it safe to say that it was symbolic of the band’s attempts to relocate a musical center (or a unifying “sound”)?
M.Es.: Yes. Buhay was our therapy and our release of years' worth of pent-up ideas. Closest Thing to Heaven is our first major celebration, our portable fireworks display.
J.S.: Thinking about it now, I think there is an unintentional pattern to our album titles post-Rico that is a bit symbolic in terms of our sound now. In Bagong Liwanag, we were searching for that new light; in Buhay, we did find what we were looking for and slowly but surely started on the rebuilding process; Closest Thing to Heaven: it’s our third release and hey, look we are still around and we’re still enjoying what we’re doing—the album’s more cohesive and the album title just describes how we are all feeling about everything now.
M.El.: I never really looked at it that way. During that time we were just four guys enjoying the creative process. What came out was something that wasn’t given much thought; we moved purely with how we felt. That’s why we’re so proud of Buhay; it’s really a recorded part of our lives.
Jayson Fernandez: We tried to deviate [from the] sounds and arrangements of the songs from Buhay. We want to make a big difference in terms of musicality. It was my first album with the band, and my first time in recording. I felt uneasy while recording that album. We want to begin a new chapter and keep the spirit of the band.
A.S.: In Buhay, you guys vaguely appear to have hinged yourselves on some musical motifs that have become “comfort zones” (big choruses, chant-like mantras, doo-wop, Tag-lish). While these motifs are still present in Closest Thing to Heaven, the traces are becoming more and more faint. Newer musical gestures spring forth, evident in things like drum-loops and atmospheric “mood” guitar. What sort of musical diet were you on during the making of this album?
M.Es.: During recording I try to listen intently to every new song while fiddling with the “colors,” imagining it in every setting. I always let the song define my drum parts, never the other way around. Kind of like digestion before eating. When it starts to take form as we go along, it sometimes helps to listen to past favorites but only as production reference for what were already trying to achieve.
J.S.: Wow, I think you are the first person to say or admit that we still have—even just the tiniest bit—some of those “motifs” from the yesteryears. The making of the songs that I wrote for this album started after we recorded Buhay. I never did stop recording demos, not just for Rivermaya, but for my other band, Daydream Cycle, for other artist friends, or simply just fooling around and practicing as well for my own amusement. I actually wrote and recorded “Dangal” as a demo shortly after we released Buhay in early 2008. The songwriting was an on-the-spot process for me. I shifted back to my preferred way of doing things by doing the music first and getting the lyrics from it. I think instead of a musical diet, I was more on a recording high. Whenever I’d have the time, it was fun for me recording demos all afternoon from scratch and then finishing the lyrics, arranging, mixing the music in the evening and after midnight I’d listen and try and figure out if it’s good enough. So yeah, I’m a demo home-recording addict.
M.El.: I listened to my usual Extreme, Guns N’ Roses stuff. But I think this time we knew what we really wanted to do musically. I believe we were more organized. We were able to rehearse and arrange each song before going into the studio.
J.F.: As I’ve said, our aim is to make a big difference in our music but maintain the sound of the band as it was before. During the recording, Japs gave me some songs to listen to, for me to get some new ideas from them.
A.S.: Lyrically, there is a lot of pent-up energy, and a lot of allusions to some vague “social” war, as in “Mulat,” which laments of a world that’s all about “Pasikatan, paastigan, palakasan.” It doesn’t have the mildly-sarcastic playfulness of, say, “Maskara.” There is genuine disenchantment in this, and a sense that the persona (a.k.a. Japs, or a pigment of his imagination) is, in a nutshell, tired. Tired of what? What is this general sense of discontent about?
M.Es.: Hmm, maybe the long-distance love affair? [To Japs] Haha—peace, man!
J.S.: I am now in this phase of my life where I prefer a more straightforward approach than the usual “me” before. “Mulat” is mainly about having a breather and hopefully see things in a different or better light after that. Unfortunately, “social wars” are a part of any working or living environment. It is a source of entertainment for some people that, yes, I am getting tired of.
M.El.: I think the discontent comes from the never-ending troubles Rivermaya or each member faces every few kilometers. In my case, I’m frustrated mostly with what people want from us or what they don’t want for us. I’m not talking about our fans because our fans are the best in the world. But there’s always a battle going on between the band and someone else. And I guess this will never stop until the band is no longer active. Or maybe this will never stop. But we love the band so much, and we won’t give up with just these little bumps on the road. We just laugh about these things and put them in sarcastic song-form.
A.S.: I am personally happy to hear more guitar (or have it higher in the mix, at least) in this record than the last one. Mike went ape-shit on those riffs and solos, and I think it re-establishes his placement in local Pinoy guitar and helps re-propel ‘Maya into that pop-that-rocks (not simply “pop rock”) pantheon. In live shows, Mike carries a lot of sonic responsibility. He is, after all, almost always a lone guitar player and has to fill a lot of aural space. What was your idea for guitar sound this time around, Mike? You play several different ways in this record; your talent terrifies me! (Guys-other-than-Mike, feel free to butt in.)
M.Es.: Mike is a great example of the opposite of lead-guitar syndrome. He has his roots grounded firmly in his guitar heroes like Steve Vai and Eddie Van Halen but he's never one to impose. He's always trying out new guitar sounds and effects set-ups pero, at the same time, ‘yung kanta pa rin ‘yung bida.
M.El.: Wow! You’re too kind, Aldus. But you’re right, there’s a bit of change in the direction in terms of the guitar parts. I recorded these parts knowing that Jayson will help me perform everything live. We were so organized this time that we sort of knew beforehand how we will perform the songs live and translated everything into recording. Of course it won’t be exactly the same, but the essentials will be there for sure. Japs helped me out with some guitar parts, the parts we call “the dirt.” And Angee Rozul helped me a lot in bringing out the real me. We decided early on that this album will have a more rock feel than Buhay, and I think we achieved what we wanted.
J.F.: Two thumbs up for Mike! I’m not saying this because I’m a member of the band. I’ve been a fan of Mike Elgar since he [joined] the band.
A.S.: I think nobody (or very few people) can dispute the band’s mastery of melody. It is hard, for instance, not to instantly digest Mark’s “Reminis” and have it ringing in your head for hours on end. It has the same sunny disposition as “Sigaw” from Bagong Liwanag. These really saccharine, tugging-at-heartsleeves melodies—are they Mark’s specialty, in a way?
M.Es.: Thanks, Aldus, but it's far from my specialty and more like my constant craving. I owe it all to my favorite Swedish band Popsicle, American band Saves The Day, Sir Rey Valera, and the APO Hiking Society, among others.
J.S.: It’s a “trade-Mark.”
M.El.: I think so. Mark listens and knows a lot of songs and artists, but my guess is he gets a lot of inspiration from pop songs from the ‘80s and ‘90s. He’s a big fan of popular music. Sometimes he also sings melodic guitar parts to me.
J.F.: Yes! Mark has great talent in making melodies; before, we used to make songs together and he had a lot of beautiful melodies that came out of his mind. Mark is naturally a sweet and mysterious person.
A.S.: How many parts is Closest Thing “childish” and how many parts is it “childlike,” you think?
M.Es.: Like street kids having the best time in the world, swimming in raging flood water as if it were their first time at the beach. It's childish 'cause it's reckless but happy. It's childlike in the way that it's begging to be heard.
J.S.: A fair mix of both. We are very childish in between recordings with a lot of laglagan jokes, practical jokes that even Angee Rozul of Tracks Studio caught the joke-time virus. I guess childlike in a way that we still get that innocent look every time we discover something new in the studio with matching “oohs” and “aahs”. We’re pretty much clueless as well in a lot of things that we do in the studio and that adds to the excitement of the continuous learning and discovering phase.
M.El.: I think it’s one-hundred percent childlike. We were dead serious when we were making this album, but our boyish ways came out in the lyrics and arrangement. Or maybe ninety-nine percent childlike, one percent childish.
A.S.: Let’s talk language. It seems that, when any of you write in English, it almost always comes in a musical form that is Western (as with the vaguely-techno, vaguely-In Rainbows¬-like “Here We Are Again”); in Filipino, you are mostly unabashedly pop (not a bad thing at all). The exception to this observation I think would be something like “Loco Moco,” which takes brief stabs at metal and hardcore during the choruses. What is your stand on the intertwined nature of language and musical form?
M.Es.: I always long for the perfect love-triangle between words, melody and chords, regardless of the language.
J.S.: Living in a country influenced by different cultures and mainly by the Western culture, I guess it’s to our advantage that we can mix and match all of them and make it into our own. Music goes beyond language and culture anyway and I sure am grateful to be one of its agents.
M.El.: Actually nothing was intentional. Maybe we were driven by the words to write certain types of music; I really don’t know. Maybe it has something to do with our local and foreign influences. But you have a good point.
A.S.: Is your continuing devotion to sing-song melodies and arena-rock-type chanting choruses in anyway tied to your existence as a live performing unit? That is, do you consciously write songs that will undoubtedly work in a live setting? For instance, “Dangal,” your first single off this new record, sounds like a no-fail crowd-pleaser this early.
M.Es.: For this album, yes we knew the songs would feel great in the live setting. We've even adjusted our live set-up a bit so we can integrate most of the samples and drum loops.
J.S.: It’s more of a conscious effort to write something that we would love to perform live. If we do it right when we perform it and the people like it then that will be the bonus right there.
M.El.: This is actually the first time that we were able to test the songs in rehearsal before recording them. We don’t really write arena-rock type songs for the live performances, but I think that’s how we choose our songs for our set list. We try to choose songs that we think people will enjoy because we want everybody to have fun in our gigs.
J.F.: Yes! But we still plan to experiment on other types of musical arrangements.
A.S.: I remember having a conversation with Mark several years ago (during Isang Ugat, Isang Dugo) about “relevance” over “popularity.” I think you were quoting Bono, Mark, but I’m not so sure now. Where does a record like Closest Thing stand in the relevance-popularity continuum, you think?
M.Es.: Yup, si Bono nga. This album has been born and we are now, once again, proud parents. It's all in their hands now. I hope it becomes relevant to those who value how music is made, recorded and placed in packaging that is as well thought of as the songs themselves, especially in this age where musical “background” is sometimes measured in gigabytes of compressed audio files instead of the time actually spent listening intently to individual songs.
J.S.: On a personal note, I’d have to say that this is the most relevant Rivermaya album that I’ve been a part of so it’s right on top of my list.
M.El.: I really don’t know how relevant this album will be, or if it will be relevant at all. I also don’t know if it’s going to be popular. But we love this album, and hopefully some people will find it relevant or make it popular. I’m happy with any positive effect it makes.
A.S.: At almost two decades-old, Rivermaya has remained somehow still youth-oriented. The musical mood generally projected by the band has been one of youthful vigor or youthful curiosity (from “Ulan” to “Ligawan Stage”). No Rivermaya record—save for maybe Free and Between the Stars—has projected an utterly adult (i.e., furrow-browed and painfully serious) sensibility. Is this a reflection of your collective band personality? Or is this how you want to make your audiences feel? This sense of frozen Neverland-like time?
M.Es.: Basta masaya, ‘yun na ‘yon! I do believe, though, that musicians never grow old.
J.S.: Hmm, I actually think that this album is more for mature audiences. Lyrically, on the surface, it may not have the poetic, big words so I guess that appeals to younger audiences, perhaps? But it’s great though whenever people interpret a song in different ways. So yeah, I guess whatever works for the listener is fine with us.
M.El.: I think so. The personality and mood of the band dictate the songs that we write. A lot of people say, “Rock ‘n’ roll keeps you young.” I believe this is true in our case. Maybe because we’re always surrounded by young people, or maybe because our line of work doesn’t require us to grow up and be serious always.
J.F.: We all feel young at heart and we want that to cascade [that] to our audiences regardless of age.
A.S.: Congratulations on a fine new record, guys! Closest Thing to Heaven is as powerful a record as any you’ve got in your discography. And I’m glad to hear you displaying newfound chops. See you around.
M.Es.: Maraming salamat sa oras at pakikinig mo, Aldus. God Bless.
J.S.: Thank you very much, man! It’s very refreshing answering non-typical questions bands usually get. I’m not sure if I really answered some of the questions though but yeah, hehe, apir!
M.El.: Thank you, Aldus! Love your book!
TAGS: Rivermaya
