A Parallel Planets piece by Tomi Uysingco
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Parallel Planets presents Spazzkid
in Aural Audibles Series: Desire (願う)
Music Review by Tomi Uysingco
Mentioned: sunset parties, sleep dancing, and magical music
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What hasn't been said about Mark Redito a.k.a. Spazzkid's huge hit of an album Desire (願う) that has everyone talking, from Pitchfork to Nylon Indonesia? Still a lot apparently.
I was about to start practicing my DJ set, seeing KLMBRNG had to spin for my friend's sunset party (a sudden engagement that I was all too happy to accept) on Wednesday, but the pull of the beach and the pull of the barbeque and the pull of the conversations along with the stickyicky are far too tempting.
A bit of background: we were, a good 10 of us and the cutest kid straight out of a cartoon, were in our friend's earthship-slash-hippie commune, a trike ride and short hike up a mountain in Boracay. It's a shady place full of trees, the house, built with bamboo and concrete, and assorted alcohol bottles. This was yesterday, October 28.
As I was trying to setup my stuff, it occurred to me that there was no need for my type of slowed down, dark mess of a playlist. What we needed was magic. What we needed was Desire. So without even hesitating, I packed my shit back in my bag and just pulled up my iTunes and pushed play. The starting part of Getting to Know You filled the place in a good set of surround sound speakers, and without missing a beat, one of our friends loudly announced to everyone that he loves the music. He said that it wanted him to dance and sleep at the same time. Sleep dancing, it's going to be a thing.
With the trees pulled up and surrounding the few of us outside sitting on a bamboo bench or swinging on a hammock, and with just the perfect breeze, we watched the girls inside the house through the open windows – waiting for them so we could go down to the beach. Until they started dancing that is. We were then resigned to the fact that the music, Spazzkid, was just too good to pass up. So we sat back, rolled another one, and drowned in the sound along with the environment.
At that moment, I missed Mark. You see, Mark is a good friend of mine back when he was still in the Philippines. In fact, his first show ever was at my house – the last act after my old hardcore band, the pop punk musings of Sarcasm and the behemoth sound of post-rock granddads, Legarda. The party was almost stopped by rentacops, but not before we've seen and heard Mark play. He used my PC monitor and brought his own CPU. Indeed, punk rock is well and alive.
As I sat there, watching my wife and our friends dance to every song on Desire, I can't but help but miss my friend. It would have been awesome if he saw what was happening at that moment in time. He is now playing bigger and better shows up in LA, I'm forecasting an imminent set for Boiler Room, but I'm pretty sure he'll be hugely happy with the intimacy and all around chill vibes his music is creating for our tiny island troop. You should have seen it Mark, it was nothing short of magic.
As the album ended, and things started to wind down, I start to pack up my computer and everyone talked briefly as to what were their plans are for the afternoon. Its unanimous, we're heading down to the beach for the sunset. We started walking down to the beach, Spazzkid's beats still dancing around our heads somewhere, and right that instance, with our shades drawn over our eyes, we didn't give a fuck about anything else.
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