Hastang of Yesteryears

Before I became an indie musician …
… I listened to MC Hammer. I was in fourth grade and I used to borrow my father’s trousers (held by my Boy Scout belt and buckle and the ends cleverly tucked in my Mighty Kid socks) and stand in front of the mirror (with my uncle’s oversized Aviator […]

The music. It’s a mystery, actually — how the bang of the drums, the bass line, the power chords and guitar solos, as well as the vocals and lyrics, mesh into one coherent form that evokes various kinds of emotion.
I get to play and make music with incredibly creative people like Makoy, Roy, Gaw, Isyat, […]

They both have really funky hair.
Both their first names start with “R”.
And they both play guitar like mad men possessed by the devil. Okay, okay, last statement only applies to one of them.
I’m talking, of course, about Roy and Raul or “Gaw” as he prefers to be called. Indeed, I consider myself incredibly lucky to […]

Dear eL,
We’re recording.
Having undergone some twists and turns in the past months, it gives me so much relief to be saying those two words.
The fact that we’ve been laying out tracks in Pheonix Glide Studio for more than two weeks now is, indeed, a massive leap in progress for this band. Nonetheless, we have […]

Last night, we had a great time in Galen’s studio (Phoenix Glide Recording Studio) — rehearsing and tweaking the last 3 songs for the album.
We opted to take our brainstorming there because Handuraw studio is always full on weekdays. We also wanted to get the “feel” of the instruments — setup and everything […]

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 […]

Our guitarist, Murray “MoiMoi” Suson was the victim of an unfortunate vehicular accident early yesterday morning. He is suffering from a fractured right shoulder and will be going under the knife for corrective surgery later today.
We, Hastang, are asking for your support and prayers. Please help us pray for the recovery of our beloved MoiMoi.

Practice makes perfect. Well, almost.
Apart from a couple of technical glitches, our one-hour set at the Plugged-In Party at Handuraw was a success. I guess we should be grateful that the glitches didn’t occur when we were playing our original songs—it would really be a shame if the RCTV crew caught it on camera. Speaking […]