Vigo, the six member chamber jazz avant pop collective from Manila, take their name from Jean Vigo, the French filmmaker who died from tuberculosis in 1934 at age 29 leaving behind a mere two films. The associations between the band and the man have to do with how both are proprietors of certain modes of ardor and certain modes of insanity. Love and lunacy. And a little of that fierce romanticism that a life that ends before its time and as it’s cresting.

The musical base matter of Vigo are the songs of bandleader and pianist and vocalist Khavn De La Cruz. Part inversions of kundiman, the Filipino equivalent of chanson, and part modern day pop balladry, it is the sticky melancholia of these songs that become the primordial muck for Vigo’s new adventures in hi-fi. But it is the dynamic created by the coming together of these six disparate musicians and disciplines that make it come to flesh.

BANG! is their first 3-song EP which pits Filipino folk song with neo-jazz, avant-pop lyrics with torch song crooning, love of life with lunacy of mind.

VIGO is made up of:

• Khavn on piano and vox
• Tao Aves on vox
• Kakoy Legaspi on guitars
• Simon Tan on bass (for this EP) Franz Magat (for the live band)
• Caliph8 on sampler, turntables, drum machine
• Paolo Manuel on drums

DETAILS: Three MP3s encoded at 192 kbps 44.1 kHz stereo.

FILE DOWNLOADS:

Download the entire album as a VBR ZIP from Archive.org.

Album cover credits: “Two Ways 7″ Illustration by Mark Salvatus on Flickr.

Khavn - Unrequited (krd-008). Album cover photo by by Katayun on Flickr.

Another homemade demo album of heartbreaking acoustic avant-pop. Consider this a collection of love songs for the bitter, the pathetic and the unrequited.

In “My Anima” Khavn sings “it’s pathetic, you’re just a dream/ like this life I’m living” and he captures the essence of this album: a constant and nagging unobtainability which has been put on a pedestal and adored as a badge of honor, emotional pain as an undeniable proof of existence.

Suavity’s Mouthpiece releases a collection of 20 singles from past releases, spanning his entire reportoire of avant-pop, avant-garde music. Most of this collection is vocals set to acoustic and electric guitars, ambient keyboards, swirling with effects and 1980s romanticist imagery in his lyrics. Reminiscent of acts like The The mixed with a little Morissey, Suavity’s Mouthpiece sets a surrealist mood with his mostly drum-free compositions drowned in reverb and delay.

The beauty lies in the simplicity of his palette. For example, in “The Rapture Incarnate” flutes, piano and strings interplay with strummed guitar as the singer swims in a sea of echo. In “I Call it Madness, but You Call it Love” every genre of music weaves in and out like someone switching radio stations.  It’s theatric, it’s neo-classical, it’s anything but mainstream pop. And that reason alone should inspire you to check out these 20 tracks from Suavity’s back catalogue.

DETAILS:
Total runtime: 1:14:45   20 MP3s encoded at various states of excellence.

Stream the release from its Internet Archive page.
Download entire album as a single zip file of VBR MP3s. (77 MB)
Download individual tracks below:

(krd-006) The Brockas - In Action Action

What do you get when you provide eight chaotic filmmakers and artists with a rehearsal space and a bunch of amplified instruments? The Brockas. Fusing a neanderthal musicality with a cosmopolitan sneer, the band creates densely orchestrated noise art that pretends to be random, when in fact every microtone is pre-planned in their collective subconscious. In Action Action provides us with 42 minutes of post-punk, post-rock, post-apocalyptic, post-it sung and spoken in their native tongue (Filipino) mostly. The band likes to call their musical genre wazak&roll (“Wasak” being a slang Filipino word meaning: exploded, imploded, drugged, or drunk depending on the nuance). Discover their chaos and rawk out, dudes.

DETAILS:

Total runtime: 42:10  MP3s encoded at 128 kbps, 44.1 kHz stereo.

DOWNLOAD entire album as a zip file. (38 MB)

DOWNLOAD individual files:
Audio Files VBR MP3
01. Action Action 21 MB
02. Chico 4.84 MB
03. Nag-Iingay Ako 918 KB
04. Habulin 3.94 MB
05. Maskara (Juan Dela Cruz Band cover) 6.61 MB
Album Cover 50 KB

(krd-005) Suavity's Mouthpiece - Au Revoir, Mssr.Meursault

Holding high a banner that reads “Defy genre. Defy expectation. Defy musicality. I am Dada,” the artist known as Suavity’s Mouthpiece (aka Sinclair McRickson) unleashes this 3-song opus that combines ’80s guitar riffs and casiotonone-y beats with layer upon layer of dadaist spoken word / sung vocals.

It’s not singing as much as whispering to your id. It’s not music as much as a destructive agenda against the structure of modern society and religion.  Forget what you know about avant-pop because Suavity’s Mouthpiece will break it down into its raw elements and spit it out at you in a rainbow of intricately-assembled vomitus. Beautiful images mixed with odds and ends.  Sounds like music made via the dadaist art process called Exquisite Corpse.

Whatever it is, it belongs here on KamiasRoad. And so with that we bid a fond welcome home to Suavity’s Mouthpiece! [Cue: applause]  Now download his music, you vermin. Or we will send you cats.
DETAILS:

Total run time: 9:39
3 MP3s encoded at approximately 320 kbps, 44.1 kHz stereo.
Plus album art jpegs.

DOWNLOAD EP as a single zip file (21.16 MB)

DOWNLOAD INDIVIDUAL FILES

Cover of Khavn- Pianos Everywhere (krd-004)

Ironically, for a release entitled “Pianos Everywhere,” half if its songs are done on solo guitar, and the other half on solo acoustic piano. And what songs these be. Angsty, emotional, sentimental Avant-Pop.

Beginning with the multiharmonic radio-friendly “Angel” Khavn unleashes acoustic bittersweet emotions set to solo piano. Even solo guitar + voice tunes like “She Doesn’t Have a Heart” betray more spirit than Khavn’s imperfect singing voice can exude. “Myth of the Beautiful Loser” is another gem, pitting a delicate Tori Amos-like piano line with witty lyrics that would put Ben Folds to shame.

Best tune hands down is the geeky “Don’t Fall in Love with a Superhero” which is probably the only pop song in the world to compare love with the Uncanny X-Men, the Mighty Avengers and daring Daredevil.

“Pianos Everywhere” is almost 32 minutes of Avant-pop wit, without the distraction of a full-band production. Thus what you get is pure, raw, undistilled music meant for the heart of the 21st century romantic.

• Download album as one zip file from Archive.org. (Reports are telling us the zip file is missing some tracks. Hence the alternative download on 4shared.)
• Or download album as one zip file from our folder on 4shared.

Cover photo: “Clouds” by Florin Mogos.

Individual files:

Khavn - Feel (Songs for the 4th Chakra) krd-003

Taking his theme from the wide palette of human emotions, Khavn strings together 12 songs that deal with various feelings and states of mind. Ranging from anger to love, envy to hate, and everything in between, “Feel” alternately rocks out, and soothes quietly. There are post-punk tunes, spoken word experiments, romantic ballads, and witty pop gems all rolled into this 35-minute lo-fi garage recording extravaganza.

The 4th chakra, located in our heart, governs our intuition and love. It feels compassion, joy and the suffering of others. “Feel” then is aimed at the heart, but pricks the mind as well.

Album cover:  landscape photo “Landscape of Love” by Studom, and magnetic poetry photo “How do you feel right now?” by Bella Lago, both on Flickr.

Total run time: 35:16

Download entire album from Archive.org.
Listen to the entire album streaming at Archive.org.

Khavn - Box (krd-002)

It begins with “He’s the boxman, he can do anything,” as artist Khavn rocks out on piano and vocals, backed by his minimal band of bass, guitar and drums. Both “Boxman” and “Hey Box” are upbeat pop numbers while the second track “Don’t even know your name” is a sentimental love song for an unnamed object of affection. The three tracks here were created for the rock opera also entitled “Box.”

With a total run time of 6:36, this single is short, sweet and infectious pop that works because it doesn’t pretend to be anything more than sugary carbohydrates and sweet after-dinner candy in a world where popstars take themselves way too seriously. World peace, boxman? Why yes, thank you.

Sounds like: Ben Folds Five, Lemonheads
Album cover photo “Wooden Boxes” by Eishier on Flickr.

Download the entire single in one zip file [2.7 MB]

Cover of Khavn- Dula (krd-001)

This first release on the KamiasRoad netlabel is made up of four piano (and electric band) instrumentals. The EP is built around a single haunting theme and expressed in 4 different flavors: from straightforward neo-classical to dramatic ‘battle’ or ‘chase scene’ frenzy, to joyful and silly 3/4 waltz, before ending with a pop love song treatment.

“Dula” means “theater play” in Filipino.  In fact, these tracks were written for a theater play regarding the Japanese occupation of the Philippines.  And the second track “Battle” was used in Khavn’s short film “Ultimo” shown at  Oberhausen 2008.

Artist /pianist Khavn is a full-fledged film director and multimedia artist in his own right who usually scores his own productions.

Total running time: 23:35

Album cover photo “Empty Stage” by SnaPsi xyzzy on Flickr.

Download the entire EP in one zip file. [VBR - 9.92 MB]

To be perfectly honest, the name KamiasRoad has been used for a domain and another website, but now it is also a netlabel brand which will release free audio products on the web for your amusement and sonic bliss.

KamiasRoad will primarily focus on music classifiable as avant-pop, experimental pop, plop, genre-defying pop, and umbilicuspop, (which we just made up for fun to see if people start using the term at all).

KamiasRoad is the netlabel arm of the Khavn digital media empire, and is the brainchild of umbilicuspop star, director, poet and artist Khavn.

Goodbye multimillion dollar record industry. Long live netlabels!

Kamias. Photo by asteegabo