Coming Soon...

Wooh!Only a few more days and we take the stage again. I'm kinda nervous though, we're gonna have a session drummer because Jem has work this weekend. Just gotta be sure we practice before we go to the gig. Just check out our myspace page for our gig scheds! See you there!

I'll leave you with a random pic.Enjoy! =P

Creation

Just got back from Manila again and we had a blast! Thanks to all the people that came to the UR gig at Kampai and Tetra pack's production at LV kamuning. It just felt so good to play again and hang out with our friends. Looking forward for a lot more of that.

Well aside from the gigs, we also started to work on new material for our next dish. We decided to go on a rather technical direction but it's not gonna be that far from what we've already done in the past. It is gonna get heavier though, I promise you that. We have several "skeletons" of new songs just waiting to be completed but we're gonna take it a little slower this time. On the last album we actually had to finish over 10 songs in just a month or so and we really think that we could've done so much more with what we created. So this time we're gonna keep the completion of the new stuff in the studio with all of us present. It will actually make the song writing go faster because we can comment right away on certain things resulting to quicker adjustments on the songs. We all basically just have to agree on everything about the songs. But we're really gonna take our time now. Trying to make the songs as good as they can be.

I hope that you guys are as excited as we are in releasing a new album and I hope more people will support us as well. But I guess it will all depend on what talent we actually have. We deserve what we get.

-Darwin

Kainisan...

Been so long since I posted anything relevant, actually it's been a while since I posted anything at all. The Philippine economy is crap and everyone is taking a blow. Especially poor, struggling artist like me. Damn, my pc's been out of commision these past few weeks. Basically my avr broke which in turn caused my monitor to, well, die I guess. Had to go online at net cafes wasting money just to check mail or search stuff when I could be doing it at the comfort of my own home for FREE! We're running on a tight budget so I don't think we'll be getting a new monitor anytime soon. And Ive been saving my own money just for bus fare and the budget for when we need to go to Manila again. Gotta be practical. I hope we can get more gigs with decent fees so that maybe we could actually earn something that can help us out. I guess gigs are also running low because of the crappy economy. Not many prods are risking their money on small not-so-famous bands like us unless we'd do it for free or for a crappy amount. What can turn the tide around for our economy anyway? In the news its always crap! Conflicts! Complaints! Violence! WTH??? So depressing sometimes. But then these are the times when I actually get inspired to create. Write new songs and draw new artwork. I'll just try to make most of my downtime. I just hope I won't be down too long.

-Darwin

Problems

It's been a while since my last post. This blog is dying and so is our career. Well, that may be too drastic a thought. Hmmn... Ok this blog was sleeping and so is our career! Yeah that's better. Gigs are so far apart now. Especially our July gig. Yes there is only one gig in July for us. Sucks! I guess no one wants to see us anymore =( Come on give us a chance! I wanna play again!

Well we actually just got back from Manila for a photoshoot for Tower of Doom. Check them out soon at our Myspace page. Maybe I'll post some here too. Just really tired right now. Not enough sleep. I need my ZZZZZZ's! Still it was great fun yesterday taking pics at UP Diliman. Funny thing was there were several other people taking pics as well complete with models and clothes and those white umbrellas that served as flashes. Kinda weirded me out actually. Oh well, I'm just glad to be home again.

-darwin

Wet Dela Musique!

Hey friends and country people! Just got back from a couple awesome gigs again! And one of them was probably the biggest gig we ever played!(so far) We finally got to play in the Fete Dela Musique which was held at the SM Mall of Asia grounds. As of what I know about Fete, it's basically a celebration of the French and their friendship with other countries. Someone correct me if i'm wrong. I really have no idea. But the thing is we've been trying to get in this event for years now! And our time finally came and I can say we gave it our best shot and we kicked butt! We hope we left people in awe of our performance because there are still a lot of people out there who haven't seen us play live. If you like our sound on cd then I suggest you come and see us live because it is a whole different story. (Ang YABAAAANG!!!) =P

Well everything pretty much went as we planned. We were actually complete at the venue at our calltime hahaha. That's very very rare with us. But I guess typhoon frank had different plans because he rained on us hard when we got there. And the show had to be stopped for a couple hours which incidentally made the whole schedule move as well. We were supposed to play at 9:20pm, we ended up playing at around 12am I think. But I gotta hand it to the kids that came to see the show, believe me there were plenty! And no typhoon could budge them from the grounds. They waited up for the show to come back drenched in the rain. And our set actually couldn't have come at a better time coz the rain stopped a couple of bands before our set. The kids were all warmed up by the time we took the stage and we could hear them yelling our songs. So we gave them one of the greatest performances of our lives! Heck, we didn't know if we would ever play a show like that again so we just gave it our all. And it payed off.

Happy as we were after the set, we remembered we had another gig that night. So we quickly said our thank you's to the organizer and our friends backstage, it turned out we knew half the people there so that took a while. So after the courtesy calls, we quickly packed our manager's car and we rushed to the next gig at Freedom Bar which was pretty far away. We got there around 1am and there was just a few bands left before us. We were last to play and most of the people that came already went home. But we still played a tight set for the few that stayed. Thank you for your patience =)

So another big day ends. Almost. Once again Bets. Earl and I had to wait for the morning bus so we could get home. And by 2am typhoon frank really made his presence known. He rampaged through the night up to when the light came through the clouds. And he just kept going. Tree branches were flying and the rooftops were rattling violently. It was really scary, and when we got to the bus station we had to wait for a couple more minutes because they had to secure the buses. The wind was so strong I thought it was gonna tip the bus over. But eventually we got home, and thank God for that! All is well again in the world of INK.

-darwin

Direk!

Today I wanted to post about something interesting and about something not many bands and artists have been privileged to do. I'm talking about making a music video. Complete with the "lights,camera and the action"! My experience with making a video is definitely one that I
will remember till the day I die. It's probably gonna be one of those memories that will flash before my eyes when I'm hanging on to dear life. (knock on wood!)

But let me tell you about the guy who helped make our video what it is. The man with the vision, the guy who made our ugly mugs look kinda cool on camera. He is Mr.Odin Fernandez, the awesome director behind our THEA video as well as several other badass vids from other badass bands. Odin is a great director to work with, well actually he's the first director we worked with =P, but still it being our first time to make a video he pretty much took it easy on us. Or I think so! Our performance shots alone were more than 20 takes. Believe me, it is extremely tiring! I dunno how the foreign bands do it. Having to give 100% performance level on each take just to get those great shots. And not to mention the heat of those giant lights, even standing still
you'd sweat like you jogged for hours.

But Odin gave us a breather every other take just to recharge our batteries which were pretty
much drained by the 10th take. I don't know how his other video shoots went but with the look of the finished products you know Odin is really damn good. Odin is a really serious director who plans early with the artist of what he thinks could be good for the video. He's really
really serious as you can see in this picture of him.

Some of Odin's works are Boy Elroy's "Out of control",Cog's
"Collapse",Sin's "Amorphosis"(SUPER BADASS!!!) and of course our own
video "To hold everything above". If anyone is interested in getting
Odin for a project just call or text him at 09176201550

It's really hard to describe exactly how it felt to make a video, especially on a very restricting budget, but one thing I can say is that it was worth every drop of sweat and every painful joint.

-darwin

DJ's World!

Hiya, hope y'all are in good health and in great moods! Today I wanted to tell you more about this "project" I've been doing called DJ's World. It's actually a children's comic blog about a kid named DJ who is actually a real person. He's the 4-year old son of a friend of mine. You can read more about him by visiting http://www.theworldofdj.com/ The site is filled with fun and informative stuff for kids. So if you have any little brothers or sisters who want to visit a fun, colorful site and even learn a few educational things then DJ's world is the place to be! Oh, I also do all the comics strips on it as well as the rest of the artwork. Do visit the site, feel free to browse and please leave your comments so we know whether you're having fun on it or we could do more. Make DJ happy!

-darwin