Rommel’s project with Nyquist is a full-length album consisting of ten Tagalog songs, all of which are his own compositions. The songs fall under the classic rock-and-roll genre, but the way the final versions came out reminds me of the Juan de la Cruz band, and dare I say it, the Rolling Stones and even Cream. I won’t spill so many beans here and so I’ll be careful what I should tell you. Here goes…

We worked on the album for a full two weeks. Myko, Meong and Allan recorded all the bare tracks for most of the session’s duration, while I mixed the album on the last two days. About two weeks afterwards, I mastered the album. (I needed the time in order to “forget” the sound of the mix!) Rommel himself *produced* the album, and gave us very clear instructions on how it should be treated. He was going for a classic 70’s sound, which affected everything, from mic and gear selection, to how the drums were tuned and miked, how the guitars sounded, how the vocals were compressed and treated, and so on…

He wanted it to sound really raw, honest and dirty, and yet we wanted a production level that is way up there, for commercial release, and we didn’t have any clue how to reconcile those two objectives. But we sure threw Auto-Tune out of the window, as well as all these modern FX boxes and processors. Rommel demanded that there shouldn’t be any studio “trickery” whatsoever: no vocal comping, punch-ins, and nudges. If a take was bad, we need to redo it and start all over. It’s amazing that his vocal tracks were all done as complete single takes… And I wasn’t very sure how the final mixes would sound like until we got there. I mean, sure we have tape emulation, but it still doesn’t sound like the real (reel?) thing.

It may not seem like it, but it is unbelievable that this album was finished in two weeks. Consider the following:

• Rommel was a one-man band when he came into the Studio. Yes he had the songs with him, and he can play great guitar, but he didn’t have a band, and so he needed session musicians. And the songs and the arrangements, while all of them were complete, were all *only* in his head!
• He actually hired a bass player and a drummer a few days before the first session day, but they didn’t know what to play at all, and the drummer (and Meong too!) simply gave up on the first song because he couldn’t groove to the click. It was by sheer divine luck that Aji’s band mates Tanits (bass) and Leklek (drums) were available at the time and so they were hurriedly called in for a crash course on the songs.
• While it would’ve been perfect to capture the band play all at the same time, there was no option to track the instruments live in one take. The band would’ve wasted so much time to learn the songs, jam it and get their playing as tight as they can. So the dreaded click track had to be called in, and the whole backing track was multitracked.
• Some esoteric engineering tricks had to be learned as well. Certain stuff such as the “Glyn Johns drum miking technique” and distant amp miking had to be learned right away, as these things are not commonly used in modern sessions anymore.

Listening back to the album now, I’m speechless… It sounds very classic rock, and yet has a modern slant to it. Warm and sweet. The material is diverse, and each song is unique. The playing is powerful and yet it’s very loose, sometimes it sounds like it’s all going to fall apart (a la Stones, in a good way of course!). The bass tone is oh so 60’s honky Fender P-Jazzy, while the guitar tones and riffs are just classic. And the singing I should say is quite laid-back but effective, lotsa mojo in there!

And Rommel is not only a powerhouse musician. If you gave his lyrics a good listen, you’ll notice the deceptively simple message of the songs, and the straightforward way he tells them to the listener. But beneath those lines reveal a certain sadness and longing, not at all trivial, by any means!

The album is entitled Gising, Gising!, and it’s quite sad that it hasn’t really taken off yet. We really hope that Rommel’s musical career would start soon. You may get in touch with him at his personal website. Brother, we wish you all the best!