Pulp Magazine / January 12, 2010
by: Jason Caballa
The story – okay, the saga – of Your Imaginary Friends began when Bicol native Ahmad Tanji decided to move to Manila to start a new life, and realized he couldn’t live without a band. Prior to that, he attempted to exchange files and ideas with future Your Imaginary Friends drummer Eric Po via email a la Postal Service, but when that didn’t pan out, he decided to fly out here instead. Immediately, he contacted his brother Khalid – a guitarist and Manila-based nurse – and Eric, and jammed the songs he had written back in Bicol. “Those songs sounded like Your Imaginary Friends already,” recalled Ahmad. “Kailangan lang ng dagdag na guitars and all that stuff.”
Gigs soon came, and after one Buzz Nite gig at Club Dredd with the Camerawalls, Clem Castro invited the band to his own Pop Shoppe production, in which they eventually became regular performers. The band also went through a succession of bassists before finally setting on Em Aquino, as well as officially signing with Clem’s Lulystars Record this year. Finally, Your Imaginary Friends’ debut EP, One Dreamy Indeterminate Hum, was released in September.
On the surface, Your Imaginary Friends plays a catchy brand of indie-pop unlike their Lilystars peers, but they’ve seasoned their jangle with a dash of elements unconventional to the genre, like surf rock riffs, an obvious amount of distorted and wah-wah’ed guitars, and, as on “Nikita,” even pained screams. “We come from different musical background,” explains Khalid, who says that he and Ahmad started listening to rock via grunge-era bands like Nirvana, and Sonic Youth. “as you can hear from the EP, there’s this noise thing (going on),” he continues. Em admits to being a Silverchair fan before meeting the other three, while Eric listens to pretty much anything he likes (“If I like that music, I like it, regardless of genre,” he affirms).
As for his lyrics, Ahmad credits his love for Weezer and The Smiths for his tendency to be self-deprecating. “I’m a Rivers Cuomo fan,” says the singer, who also admits to having been “a loser in high school.” “That experience in high school, naiwan siya sa akin masyado, and that’s why there’s always this bittersweet delivery with my words; laging may self-pity.”
The band have a lot to be pleased about nowadays, though, as they have been amassing enough material for a full-length record by polishing old songs, as well as coming up with entirely new ones. “It’s gonna be more of a team effort now when it comes to songwriting, I guess,” says Eric. “Siguro the songs are gonna get a bit angrier, or darker.” The drummer also says that their fans have been clamoring for their new songs to appear in CD form immediately.
“They’re craving for these songs to be on the record, and they want an LP right away,” continues Khalid. “But we need more time. Right now, we’re focused on playing muna. It’s a continuous learning process din kasi. We want to play more and more para mahasa rin, para hindi lang kami matengga nang ganito lang. Tuloy-tuloy ‘yung pagtugtog.” The band members also stress that they want to be more involved in the production of their next record, since Castro and Robert Javier produced their debut EP. “We want to make the material on the (upcoming) LP better than (the songs on) the EP,” he adds.
“Everyone’s writing right now; ‘yun ang maganda,” concludes Ahmad. “Dati kasi ako ‘yung may gawang kanta – ready na siya. May mga ganoon pa rin naman, pero this time, hindi naman siya conscious effort na ganoon; nagkataon lang na lahat talaga nagsusulat na. So (the next record is) gonna sound more like Your Imaginary Friends.”
