By Izah Morales
INQUIRER.net

SURREAL yet real.

The misty atmosphere in the auditorium welcomed the audience to a seeming dreamland of entertainment. But when the strings, drums, keyboard, and voices began to mingle, it woke the audience to the reality of Pinoy music at its best.

Sugarfree and Up Dharma Down rocked the house as lights danced with the music.

Here’s Sugarfree singing “Hari ng Sablay.”

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By Candice Montenegro, Contributor
INQUIRER.net

THE OTHER day, I had a really bad Last Song Syndrome (LSS) moment. I was just getting out of the car when I heard the ad for this year’s radio ad awards (the chipmunk song about mixed nuts), and I was singing it the entire day. Usually, the cure for LSS is to listen to the song in full, but I never heard the ad again so I went to bed with the awful song still playing in my mind.

LSS, if you still haven’t figured out, is when you hear a song and it gets stuck in your head, usually without you meaning (or wanting) to. I think LSS is every advertisement jingle’s mission; that way they can make you subconsciously want their product or something.

Singers and songwriters probably think the same thing. If a song is LSS-worthy, then it’s more likely that the person will enjoy the song and buy the album. So I guess a song’s LSS-worthiness equates to its success somehow. There are songs that are just catchier than the others, and these songs are usually the ones that make it to the top of the charts. So what makes a song LSS-worthy?

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By Izah Morales
INQUIRER.net

YOU satisfy your mouth with food. You satisfy your eyes with beauty. You satisfy your nose with fragrance. You satisfy your ears with music. But before music can be produced, it originates from individual sounds. Have you considered sound as ear candy?

New Media Arts Manila (NMAM) gave people at the Mogwai Film Club a different experience with sound with Minus Ten Decibels. With the dimly-lit atmosphere and fluffy pillows, people sat comfortably as their ears were rocked by the quasi-surround quadrophonic sound system and their eyes blinked at fast-paced abstract visuals. They called it post-music but its roots can be traced to sound art.

Postmodern (or post-post-postmodern, as NMAM’s Blums Borres quipped) and unconventional, sound art is not only hearing but seeing. It is creating sound without instruments. Technology does the magic. As they explain in this video interview, sound artists Blums Borres (left) and Jing Garcia of NMAM get their inspiration from the environment, wherever they may be.

The ordinary becomes extraordinary with technology. It may be noise to others but it is ear candy to those who consider it as art.

Editor’s note: Video contains clips of Jing Garcia’s performance. Interview conducted by INQUIRER.net multimedia reporter Izah Morales. Video taken by INQUIRER.net online videographer Janie Christine Octia and INQUIRER.net community evangelist Alex Villafania.