The UDD Documentary called On Either Side will be shown on MTV on the ff dates:

Nov 23, 6pm Sunday

Nov 25, 4pm Tuesday

Nov 27, 8pm Thursday

Nov 29, 10pm Saturday

The video won BEST ANIMATION (Music Video Category) at the ANIMAHENASYON 2008!

Congrats to AcidhousePost, Inksurge, Terno, UDD and to US! :-)

See you there, all!

Where’s Polyap?

Luis reveals some post Bipolar launch musings and shares Blue Nile tips for starters.

Now we are bipolar.

As expected, the launch of Up Dharma Down’s second album last October 24 was well-attended—rather more well-attended than the band or their management expected, apparently, as the line of people waiting to get into the venue snaked down the fourth floor hallway of the RCBC Plaza even as the band launched into their set.

I was happy for the band; better to have too many people than too few for an event like that of course, and I commend manager and Terno Recordings label head Toti D. for keeping safety considerations paramount and not packing in more people despite the grumblings of the denied. (It was a lesson for those who live by “Pinoy time,” in the end; people who were there on schedule—like my sister and her friends—had no trouble finding places.) And though we were a little late, we did manage to get in, though from where we ended up standing, we could only see part of lead singer Armi Millare’s shoulder and the shaggy back of guitarist Carlos Tañada’s head. The band played a mix of old and new material to a delighted, devoted audience, and here and there even threw in a snatch of other people’s songs (such as “She Saw the World” by The Blue Nile).

As for Bipolar, the album itself, we got the limited edition, with a band documentary on DVD and the packaging like a hardbound book, with the lyrics on photo-cards slipped inside. I’ve been listening to it every day since the launch, though as I tend to set my current favorites on ‘repeat’ I don’t have a good sense of the album as a whole yet. “Sana” sounds like it should be a huge hit, as it melds wide appeal with uncompromising songcraft in much the same way that previous favorite “Oo” did, and the final version of “Every First Second”—the first song I heard off the album in advance, some months back—is as exciting and powerful as ever.

The documentary does not seem designed to win over those unfamiliar with the band, though even old fans may object to the unflattering way the band members are shot—angles and lighting conspiring to make them much less attractive than they are in real life—though I concede that the director may have been trying to make some sort of point. In any case, it’s still a nice thing for a fan to have, if only for such moments as Armi pointing to bassist Paul Yap as the most sappy of the four of them, or drummer Ean Mayor’s view of their musical progress, or Carlos’ musings on their popularity.

Armi and the Blue Nile. And speaking of lead singer Armi, I ran into her at Cubao half a week after the launch, and we ended up talking about The Blue Nile. Like myself, Armi is a huge fan of the Scottish band—and, it turns out, the feeling is mutual: the lead singer of The Blue Nile, Paul Buchanan, is an Up Dharma Down fan as well. In fact, he has anointed them his “favorite group,” as those who read the blurbs on the Bipolar e-flyer know. The two of us got all gushy about the man and his music—the second Blue Nile album in particular. When I got home, I had to break out my copy of Hats and listen to it again, even though, depending on your mood, it’s not exactly easy to listen to. By that I don’t mean that it’s ear-confusingly experimental or horribly recorded; quite the contrary. It’s just that it deals in a kind of beautiful bittersweetness—it is a heart-rending mix of melancholy and wonder. It is the sound of a lonely neon-lit city, of hours stretching out into the hopeful dark, of taxis that you let pass by because you don’t exactly know where you want them to take you. If that sounds like something you want to listen to, by all means, look for their albums. The easiest one to find here is probably High, which had a local release in 2004, and includes “She Saw the World.”

My five-song Blue Nile primer, though, would consist of “Tinseltown in the Rain” from their first album A Walk Across the Rooftops (what a great title), “The Downtown Lights” and “Saturday Night” from their second album Hats, “Happiness” from third album Peace At Last, and “Midnight Without You,” a collaboration with Chris Botti. They also had a hit in the ’80s which some of you may remember: the wonderful “Stay.” (”…I will understand you.”)

(November 8, 2008, Manila Bulletin)