We wanna rock with you
Philippine Daily Inquirer
November 26, 2004
Philippine Daily Inquirer
November 26, 2004
THE LATE ISABEL
by Pearlsha Abubakar
Graveyards. Cathedrals. Full moon rising. These are the images that come with gothic music – the heavy keyboard droning out minor keys along with a blood-curdling banshee wail. But for goth band THE LATE ISABEL, these are the archetypal sounds and images they’d rather do away with.
“We’re actually opening up the music and making it simpler. Not ethereal, but mas malakas ang punk element,” explains main songwriter Allan Hernandez. “We’re fascinated with paradoxes,” he says, and his life could be one example. During the day, Allan writes for broadsheets and broad showcase FHM; at night he composes demented poetry heavily influenced by Charles Simic. He has arrived in black, just like the rest of his bandmates: drummer John Pete Agcaoili, a public relations officer for advocacy group PETA by day and an insomniac; bassist and IT major Roval Bacali who is also a family man; and vocalist Wawi Navarroza an experimental photographer who is a deadringer for actress Winona Ryder. With her fuchsia eyeshadow, leather boots and intense mien, the pretty singer recalls Ryder’s eccentric character in Beetlejuice. “Our music is very conceptual. We love images and theatricality, “ she says. To prove her point, she opens her portfolio, a haunting series of black and white photos showing a little girl in various stages of disfigurement.
According to Hernandez, there were others that came and went before Wawi. “We’ve been playing since 1996, under different names - Old World Charm, Madeleine Usher - and we had other vocalists. But with them, hindi kami masyado magka-wavelength. Until Wawi came along,” he narrates. The boys were blown away after they saw her works, which accurately depicted the very concept they had in mind. In fact, they are planning to use one of the pictures, a disturbing composite of a little girl’s face for the cover of their album The Doll’s Head, which is still in progress.
They are such kindred spirits that John Pete, for instance, becomes disoriented, when he has to play with another bassist or another vocalist. “Nag-iiba kasi yung tunog,” he claims. As the most experienced guy in the band, John Pete, who formed a death metal band Allan called Thanatopsy, back in 1992 used to play Club Dredd (“the old Club Dredd” he emphatically declares). But like the rest, he enjoys listening to 80s new wave like The Cure and Joy Division. Meanwhile, Roval, the quietest among them, has named his son Lance Ivo after a goth character. Wawi, who is an unabashed Toriphile, sings in an arrhythmic contralto that matches the dark tranquility of Allan’s poetry. “I love the fact that we can play certain roles when we’re on stage,” gushes the Italo Calvino/Carl Jung-reading former session guitarist of Prominence of Cathedrals. Her highly granulated imagery, drawn from the commonplace, evokes a brooding sense of horror that was achieved without any special effects.
In the same way, Allan feels that goth music doesn’t have to make extra special demands on the listener. “People think our music is snobby and niche. But we think listeners are not taking enough risks,” he says.
So far the group has been banding together with fellow goth musicians like Five Wounds to Enter and other acts under the Subkulture label in order to survive. “Those who do listen and stay in our gigs may not immediately understand what it is,” Wawi explains. “But they appreciate it.”
This article is the FIRST press feature about The Late Isabel. It appeared in the Homegrown section of PULP MAGAZINE, October 2000 issue. Written by Pearlsha Abubakar. Band Photograph by Gari Buenavista.
by Pearlsha Abubakar
Graveyards. Cathedrals. Full moon rising. These are the images that come with gothic music – the heavy keyboard droning out minor keys along with a blood-curdling banshee wail. But for goth band THE LATE ISABEL, these are the archetypal sounds and images they’d rather do away with.
“We’re actually opening up the music and making it simpler. Not ethereal, but mas malakas ang punk element,” explains main songwriter Allan Hernandez. “We’re fascinated with paradoxes,” he says, and his life could be one example. During the day, Allan writes for broadsheets and broad showcase FHM; at night he composes demented poetry heavily influenced by Charles Simic. He has arrived in black, just like the rest of his bandmates: drummer John Pete Agcaoili, a public relations officer for advocacy group PETA by day and an insomniac; bassist and IT major Roval Bacali who is also a family man; and vocalist Wawi Navarroza an experimental photographer who is a deadringer for actress Winona Ryder. With her fuchsia eyeshadow, leather boots and intense mien, the pretty singer recalls Ryder’s eccentric character in Beetlejuice. “Our music is very conceptual. We love images and theatricality, “ she says. To prove her point, she opens her portfolio, a haunting series of black and white photos showing a little girl in various stages of disfigurement.
According to Hernandez, there were others that came and went before Wawi. “We’ve been playing since 1996, under different names - Old World Charm, Madeleine Usher - and we had other vocalists. But with them, hindi kami masyado magka-wavelength. Until Wawi came along,” he narrates. The boys were blown away after they saw her works, which accurately depicted the very concept they had in mind. In fact, they are planning to use one of the pictures, a disturbing composite of a little girl’s face for the cover of their album The Doll’s Head, which is still in progress.
They are such kindred spirits that John Pete, for instance, becomes disoriented, when he has to play with another bassist or another vocalist. “Nag-iiba kasi yung tunog,” he claims. As the most experienced guy in the band, John Pete, who formed a death metal band Allan called Thanatopsy, back in 1992 used to play Club Dredd (“the old Club Dredd” he emphatically declares). But like the rest, he enjoys listening to 80s new wave like The Cure and Joy Division. Meanwhile, Roval, the quietest among them, has named his son Lance Ivo after a goth character. Wawi, who is an unabashed Toriphile, sings in an arrhythmic contralto that matches the dark tranquility of Allan’s poetry. “I love the fact that we can play certain roles when we’re on stage,” gushes the Italo Calvino/Carl Jung-reading former session guitarist of Prominence of Cathedrals. Her highly granulated imagery, drawn from the commonplace, evokes a brooding sense of horror that was achieved without any special effects.
In the same way, Allan feels that goth music doesn’t have to make extra special demands on the listener. “People think our music is snobby and niche. But we think listeners are not taking enough risks,” he says.
So far the group has been banding together with fellow goth musicians like Five Wounds to Enter and other acts under the Subkulture label in order to survive. “Those who do listen and stay in our gigs may not immediately understand what it is,” Wawi explains. “But they appreciate it.”
This article is the FIRST press feature about The Late Isabel. It appeared in the Homegrown section of PULP MAGAZINE, October 2000 issue. Written by Pearlsha Abubakar. Band Photograph by Gari Buenavista.
THE LATE ISABEL: Rapture and the Rhapsodist
by Karl de Mesa, 2005
In the dreams of those she haunts, Isabel is always leaving. She has been sighted barefoot and pale, by various sleepers, at the doorstep of a familiar downtown cinema, the gates of a university building at closing time, departing a smoky club and exiting a convenience store at twilight. She vanishes when she steps to the curb, just as the high beams of an approaching car freeze her. Those who do wake, often wake in sweat.
“I was playing with a visual concept, a series of posters showing this half-familiar woman always in transit,” says Allan Hernandez, explaining the basis of the name and the band’s wraith-like, female persona.
The music of THE LATE ISABEL is the origin, product and nature of this haunting rolled into a single koan. It is music that makes of funerals and wakes a celebration -- a time to sing and a time to dance as tears run down your face. The character of Isabel, the vignettes and scenes of her life (and probably her demise) live on in the band’s songs. Aural creations that crest and break like a wave of grief to wash over both viscera and brain with the force of psychedelia, ambient, shoegazer, dark wave and goth.
The band started in 1998 as MADELINE USHER then renamed itself OLD WORLD CHARM in 1999, shedding and gaining a few members along the way. Earlier still it was a death metal outfit named THANATOPSY, and so on to THE LATE ISABEL DELGADO, now remembered even more easily -- and fondly -- without her surname. The band is currently composed of WAWI NAVARROZA (vocals), ALLAN HERNANDEZ (guitars), JP AGCAOILI (drums), and ROVAL BACALE (bass), all veterans of the Manila goth-punk scene.
Coming of age in the post-punk era, the quartet grew up with a love for bands that eschewed the freewheeling go-go of ‘80s mainstream music, groups like The Cure, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Clan of Xymox, Bauhaus, Joy Division and the gaggle of artists under the 4AD banner. With this came the intuitive understanding that music had to function on all to achieve a holistic effect.
“Art is not an isolated experience. It is deeply personal and deeply communal. I believe that the [visual] aspect of the band needs to be included in the package,” relates JP Agcaoili.
“If I could put music, painting, poetry, literature all in one package, then I would love to do that,” agrees Wawi Navarroza.
Their debut album, DOLL’S HEAD, is currently in the finishing steps of production with eight exceptional tracks composed of equal parts lament, anguish, awe and snapshots of everyday tragedies. From the sinuous and seductive chant of the title track, the hungry eloquence of “Fingers Around the Wineglass,” the demented agitation of “Follow (The Mad March),” to the exploration of the urban abyss that is “Midnight City,” the record is indeed the culmination of two years’ labor in the subculture fringe.
Meanwhile, their live performance has been praised by PULP MAGAZINE as a “tour through the dark corners of . . .dreams,” adding that, “to watch The Late Isabel live is to be intrigued. . .and entranced.”
DOLL’S HEAD crystallizes the quartet’s skill for leading the listener to precision rapture via a swirling palette of textures and sonic landscapes that bring to fore the monsters, beautiful or otherwise, lurking in the depths. Proof that being haunted can be a ravishing, rhapsodic experience.
by Karl de Mesa, 2005
In the dreams of those she haunts, Isabel is always leaving. She has been sighted barefoot and pale, by various sleepers, at the doorstep of a familiar downtown cinema, the gates of a university building at closing time, departing a smoky club and exiting a convenience store at twilight. She vanishes when she steps to the curb, just as the high beams of an approaching car freeze her. Those who do wake, often wake in sweat.
“I was playing with a visual concept, a series of posters showing this half-familiar woman always in transit,” says Allan Hernandez, explaining the basis of the name and the band’s wraith-like, female persona.
The music of THE LATE ISABEL is the origin, product and nature of this haunting rolled into a single koan. It is music that makes of funerals and wakes a celebration -- a time to sing and a time to dance as tears run down your face. The character of Isabel, the vignettes and scenes of her life (and probably her demise) live on in the band’s songs. Aural creations that crest and break like a wave of grief to wash over both viscera and brain with the force of psychedelia, ambient, shoegazer, dark wave and goth.
The band started in 1998 as MADELINE USHER then renamed itself OLD WORLD CHARM in 1999, shedding and gaining a few members along the way. Earlier still it was a death metal outfit named THANATOPSY, and so on to THE LATE ISABEL DELGADO, now remembered even more easily -- and fondly -- without her surname. The band is currently composed of WAWI NAVARROZA (vocals), ALLAN HERNANDEZ (guitars), JP AGCAOILI (drums), and ROVAL BACALE (bass), all veterans of the Manila goth-punk scene.
Coming of age in the post-punk era, the quartet grew up with a love for bands that eschewed the freewheeling go-go of ‘80s mainstream music, groups like The Cure, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Clan of Xymox, Bauhaus, Joy Division and the gaggle of artists under the 4AD banner. With this came the intuitive understanding that music had to function on all to achieve a holistic effect.
“Art is not an isolated experience. It is deeply personal and deeply communal. I believe that the [visual] aspect of the band needs to be included in the package,” relates JP Agcaoili.
“If I could put music, painting, poetry, literature all in one package, then I would love to do that,” agrees Wawi Navarroza.
Their debut album, DOLL’S HEAD, is currently in the finishing steps of production with eight exceptional tracks composed of equal parts lament, anguish, awe and snapshots of everyday tragedies. From the sinuous and seductive chant of the title track, the hungry eloquence of “Fingers Around the Wineglass,” the demented agitation of “Follow (The Mad March),” to the exploration of the urban abyss that is “Midnight City,” the record is indeed the culmination of two years’ labor in the subculture fringe.
Meanwhile, their live performance has been praised by PULP MAGAZINE as a “tour through the dark corners of . . .dreams,” adding that, “to watch The Late Isabel live is to be intrigued. . .and entranced.”
DOLL’S HEAD crystallizes the quartet’s skill for leading the listener to precision rapture via a swirling palette of textures and sonic landscapes that bring to fore the monsters, beautiful or otherwise, lurking in the depths. Proof that being haunted can be a ravishing, rhapsodic experience.