Hastang of Yesteryears

Bandisms: Chronicles of an Indie Band

Where to begin?

Erstwhile vocalist Ria Redulla told us a few months back that she could not do the vocal duties for Hastang long-term. While we do respect her decision and wish her the best, it was certainly a day of uncertainty for the remaining band members. We could barely keep our hopes up during the summer.

Good thing we did because a few months later, we found this feisty banshee whom I’m proud to say is now the new singer of Hastang and that’s official. Many thanks to Janjan Perez for bringing her to our attention.

Her name of course is Ara Chawdhury and I can really say that she is more than qualified (killer pipes, songwriting chops and all) for the job. More importantly, her dedication and enthusiasm at the thought of exploring and making music together is as great as Gaw’s love for beer.

And I’m glad to report that we have already written and arranged some new Hastang material (as well as re-discovered way way old ones). We have also done a number of gigs at Outpost (check out Ara’s account of her first Hastang gig here), Handuraw and Vudu.

We will be sure to post future gigs and band developments in our new blog so watch out for those. The next few months are going to be exciting.

P.S. Congratulations to Mommy Yan!!!

Announcements

…er, marries the woman of his dreams. From the bottom of our hearts, congratulations and best wishes!

Hastang News

I’ve always known that Gaw’s a hell of a guitar player. Back in the day, we used to sneak in Artist Dais just to watch him play those classic rock licks for this band called Eve’s Garden. Imagine my utter delight when he became Hastang’s lead guitarist.

Gigs

The last time we went to Manila, we had an unforgettable gig at the now-defunct indie hangout 6 Underground in Makati City. Needless to say, we’re very excited to go back and perform once again for the Manila crowd.

Media Center

“We’ve heard it before –a group of schoolmates, jamming in a garage, forming a band name, dreaming of being the next big thing in Pinoy music, and the next thing you know, they are the next big thing in Pinoy music.”

Behind the Music

I still can’t t figure out how Tessa came up with those haunting melodies, especially in the chorus part, which features two different melodies doing a tango. While doing the vocal tracks in the studio, Galen asked me: “Which one is the lead vocal part?” I shrugged. Both?

Songwriting

Normally we don’t concoct unusual endings for our songs. But for “Mid-flight”, we did anyway. It’s funny because we never really made a conscious decision to do it. It just came to us when we did our final band rehearsal a day before PNB version 5. This only proves that there’s more to full band jamming than just perfecting a song’s rhythm, feel and over-all delivery. Doing time in the studio also breeds creative spontaneity, which in our case, worked really well in crafting a rather atypical finale for the song.

General Discussion

What is indie rock? Here’s a nice, little dissertation about defining “indie rock”. Many thanks to Yan for sharing this.

Groupie-isms

What does it mean to be a Hastang groupie? For me, being a groupie equates to being a fan, a friend, a sister, even a mother to the band. We’ve been through so much — Hastang and I.