Hastang of Yesteryears

I don’t wanna admit it, but the story of Hastang is beginning to sound like an M. Night Shyamalan plot twist (cue Hitchcockian music here). Yeah, we seem to have a knack for attracting change — and I’m talking a lot of it lately in the past two months.

For instance, Jayson Ang informed us last September that he won’t be doing guitar duties for Hastang anymore because he has to take care of personal matters. While we accepted his decision with regret, we were grateful that his exit did not leave any lasting damage because MoiMoi was still around to pick up the slack.

Staying true to the dual-guitar-player format, we asked guitar-extraordinaire Paul “Poldo” Cañares (of “Frank” fame and an excellent guitarist) to play for Hastang’s scheduled October gig. Thankfully, Poldo agreed…and the result was one of the better gigs we’ve done for some time.

Unfortunately, in light of his prior commitments (he plays guitars for the band Zzubu, and at the same time doubles as sound engineer-slash-mixer for the Zzubu studio), we felt that it would not be easy for him to play full-time for Hastang.

That left us with the charming MoiMoi. In spite of his initial hesitation, he finally committed to sessioning for Hastang until Roy returns or until his other responsibilities (job, family, girlfriend, etc.) interfere (whichever comes first).

By early October (and with MoiMoi’s consent), we happily scheduled pre-production and production work on our album before month’s end.

Quite unexpectedly, MoiMoi (who, by this time, was our only guitarist left) got involved in a vehicular accident (see entry below…and oh, by the way, he pulled through surgery and he’s currently recuperating at home) — and this, quite predictably, put a huge dent in our plans. And with Roy’s indefinite leave of absence hanging over our heads, we were left with very few options indeed.

What a predicament.

Fortunately (I’m very happy to use this word given the present situation), we found a chap by the name of Raul “Gaw” Luche who’s very much willing to join the band as a guitarist. Phew!

Having played with Squall (founding member) and Eve’s Garden, we believe that his skill, musicality and experience will help Hastang to further explore and define its sound. Gaw, we’re glad to have you in the band, bai. I’m sure your talent will be invaluable in the coming weeks.

Yesterday, we had the opportunity to jam with Gaw for the first time. We tackled the last three remaining tracks in our album, namely: “Drowned”, “Waiting for Murray” (a shout-out to our beloved MoiMoi), and “Old Lovers’ Mantra”.

We’re hoping to finalize the arrangement of these three songs so that we can begin recording for our long-overdue album.

All we want for Christmas is to finish the album. It’s our Holiday present to ourselves, to our families, and to our supporters. Mayta madayon na gyud.

-Guile

guile loves his girlfriend, adores (er, adored) Michael Jackson, and wants "to be complete". When he's not playing bass for Hastang, he creates thingamajigs for icomm and writes gibberish in his not-so-secret diary.
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