About Me
Hello. Some of you might be interested to know how I came about. Here is an explanation:I was always into creating music and the process that goes along with it. I started making music when I was around 12 years old, and of course the stuff produced then was of trash can substance. My first love was hip-hop, and I was really into the sounds of De La Soul, Stetsasonic, Wu-Tang, A Tribe Called Quest, and Arrested Development. After around three years of tinkering around, I started getting serious about the whole thing, and I started looking for myself in terms of sound. I was convinced I was still making hip-hop, but a chance encounter would open my eyes to a world I was ignorant about. As far as I was concerned, I was just up to "making beats" for emcees.The "hip-hop" I was producing was very melodic, and the beat was always syncopated. It had unexpected twists and turns, and many emcees were interested, but were not sure about my direction. By the time I was 16, the studio I was working in expelled me from their ranks due to their inability to comprehend what was going on. They were saying things like, "Your beats are strange, and are confusing. People will not like this". I can't blame them, I didn't really know what I was doing either, although I was a little angry about the whole thing. Shortly after this, I moved to Baguio City, a city astride a mountain and still one of my most favorite places in the world. Here I would get a chance to be alone and keep practicing music creation.During my stay in Baguio City, things were moving in Manila's music scene. There was a club in the area that catered almost solely to the avant garde music scene, and so naturally I was interested in going there. At this point I was still listening to all the old hip hop I had been listening to for years and some heavy metal. I was the vocalist of a band that made originals, but also covered metal songs from Pantera and Slayer and the like. I had also started drumming and had become pretty able with it. However, my ears were tired and my brain needed something different. Something spectacular.After years of electronically producing avant garde hiphop and searching for something different, I was introduced to the world of Experimental Electronica through this club in Manila called "Kemistry" and have been fascinated with it since. I couldn't get enough of artists such as Aphex Twin and Autechre and soon the music I created started to become very influenced by the new kinds of sounds I was exposed to. I also met DJs and other people from Kemistry that knew this world of music I had been ignorant about who would influence me up to this point. My first time in Kemistry was crazy. I couldn't decipher what was coming out of the sound system! I remember thinking, "Wow, this is some new shit". I knew off the bat that THIS was what I was into.After about six months of absorbing the great music in Kemistry, I chanced upon perhaps the greatest musical influence in my life. Erick Ong, who would later go on to marry my sister, would end up showing me EVERYTHING in detail. From Aphex Twin to Mouse on Mars to Jeff Mills to Microstoria to Panacea to Oval to Curd Duca to Squarepusher to Merzbow to Beans to Plastikman to Plone to everything else! He was one of the most solid DJs in the country, even back then; he was into mixing IDM and ambient, and also hard techno when it came to dancefloors.Eventually I met people in my country from the Experimental scene and have since just continued to work with them and myself. Most people in the Philippines still do not understand (or do not want to understand) the Experimental side to music. Perhaps it is better that way though. Either way, I will continue to create music that I enjoy, regardless about what people have to say about it.Moon Fear Moon / Mu Arae Transmission
is John Sobrepena.
