maestro
A s I briskly walked along this semi- Shit happens when you steal samples from a
ALL flooded sidestreet to meet Earl Drilon,
TENGAL to most people, I was thinking what
his asylum might look like. I imagined a
bachelor’s bedroom/ recording lab, but what
I got was a house possibly built in the
that
‘60s, two brown mongrels taking shed in the
garage, and an aunt waiting for her voice
student in the living room. “You should be
interviewing her, not me. She’s an opera
singer in New York.” he sheepishly sug-
gested after greeting me.
That afternoon we talked in his
[MURDERED]
wide old school salon, there was something
ominous about the heavy rain lashing on the
roof. The scene at the windswept garden
could very well be from one of his video
clips, looped while he’s mixing some ambi-
ent sound samples to some visual algorithm.
The wind tentatively whistling through the
jazz faded curtains said I was in for a kill.
Tengal just pours, no, surges with razor-
sharp insight when he rambles about his
work.
What would you expect from an
artist preparing a desert shoot for an in-
stallation called Situations of the Flesh,
Sound artist, improv
jumping from Malaysia to Singapore for
actor, conceptual music festivals, and managing a media art
filmmaker, and data- kitchen called SABAW (lit. soup)? You’ll
sense his odd appetite for the obscure and
scratcher TENGAL teaches taboo—from bondage to post-DJing, philoso-
STATUS how he gets away phy to “acting”, and his childhood fancy
Shawie to, well, shit. Here are some life
with murdering all sorts lessons from the guy who scored directors
of sound. Raya Martin’s Autohystoria, Khavn De la
Cruz’ Squatterpunk, John Torres’ Todo Todo
By Nante Santamaria Teros, and Lav Diaz’ Death in the Land of
Encantos resounding acclaims in Cinemanila,
Vancouver, and Venice film festivals. For
all I knew, he probably was coding, through
all the buzz of questions, some kind of
music I couldn’t record.
Sound designer + composer + actor + cura-
tor + filmmaker = ARTIST Maybe I’m just an
artist in a very general way…what inter-
ested me most were these composers who were
pushing the boundaries of notated music…
You approach the musician maybe in a more
spiritual way, in a more direct way.
religious fanatic’s radio show.
[“Godhead” was] my early experiment…and I
had this band…called Eattae… If you can
read in Filipino, you’ll definitely know it
means [eat] shit. We were joking ourselves
that our genre would be murder jazz—like
we’re murdering musical jazz…what was
interesting in making this thing was the
song was notated…that’s basically radio
sampling.
Filmmakers can be rockstars too.
When I got back [from Berlinale Talent
Campus], I started working with Lav Diaz…
We were playing in this noise band…called
The Brockas. We were just basically pissing
the music scene off—that was the intention,
playing with hype.
Musical instruments can feed on themselves.
I’ve also been performing lately with a
very simple mixer, and I just put the out-
put of the mixer and play it inside. It’s
like the mixer is feeding on itself. You’re
generating the internal sound of the mixer…
It’s like a post-DJ thing. DJ’s scratch
records; a post-DJ would scratch data or
mix data.
Stem cell research will preserve genius.
Maybe I’m an old man stuck in a young man’s
body. But I don’t really wanna grow old
anymore. I just wanna retain this. If I
could be immortal, and my brain can prob-
ably just grow and whatever and I can keep
my body to the same thing…that would be
great.
Starving artists can live off grants.
I don’t have time to do something else.
That’s why I’m also broke… I used to work
for…a cable show and created this macho,
sexist, politically incorrect show called
Men Power… That’s pretty much the closest
thing that I had to a day job.
Don’t do what is asked, and you could still
pass. My school’s kind of experimental…it’s
called Community of Learners; it’s in QC…
they were encouraging us [through] these
alternative teaching methods. Instead of
making a paper, for example, can I just
make a comic book…as a project? It pretty
much taught me how to get away with any-
thing.
Real life can make you the Best Actor.
I don’t even think I could call it act-
ing…[the director of Todo Todo Teros] was
telling me stuff but, most of the time, I
was just doing my own thing. There’s no
scriptwriting, and then he just…follows me
around, and then I sort of interact. That’s
a very strange experience.
You can be your own teacher.
I didn’t have money [on my birthday]… To
celebrate, I just made a sort of vow to my-
self and to the public: “OK, I’m gonna make
23 albums and release it in 23 months…” I’m
going to…make it into a box set and call
it My Education because it is, in a way…a
self-education thing…you sort of challenge
yourself so you move forward, and after
that, I don’t know what’s gonna happen.
www.myspace.com/tengal
www.statusmagonline.com - 45