Kakie Pangilinan releases seven-track EP

ADVERTISEMENT

dpo-dps-seal
Welcome, Kapamilya! We use cookies to improve your browsing experience. Continuing to use this site means you agree to our use of cookies. Tell me more!

Kakie Pangilinan releases seven-track EP

Leah C. Salterio

Clipboard

Senator Francis “Kiko” Pangilinan has brought a great deal of influence and inspiration to his eldest daughter, budding singer-songwriter Frankie Pangilinan or fondly “Kakie” to family and friends.

“My dad has imbedded a great deal of agricultural enthusiasm in me,” Pangilinan told ABS-CBN News. “One of the greatest lessons of farming is that the best fruits are shaped by hardships.

“There is no growth without rain. No yield without toil and labor. A broken heart therefore, must inevitably mean something in the end. And I think this body of work is proof of that.”

Even the letter play in Pangilinan’s seven-track EP, “abOUT hER SPACE,” is significantly inspired by her dad. “I think ‘abh’ has come to represent both a broken heart and a bountiful harvest,” Pangilinan maintained.

ADVERTISEMENT

Interestingly, most of the songs that Pangilinan wrote and produced in “abOUT hER SPACE,” are older than her previous releases. Last year, she came out with “battlescars,” a follow-up to the Ely Buendia-produced track, her debut single, “tyl (true young lovers),” which she also composed and released in 2019.

“To listen to them brings back memories instead of representing current events,” Pangilinan said about the tracks in her EP. “I kept them apart from myself maybe in some misguided attempt to dissociate from what they epitomize.”

Watch more in iWantv or TFC.tv

The titles of the songs Pangilinan wrote and recorded are always uniquely written without capital letters. Her new EP, released by Curve Entertainment, contains the single “afterparty.”

Meanwhile, “shatter,” is perhaps the most difficult song to sing for her. “Given its emotional range and the painful memories it’s associated with, ‘shatter’ took an old, unearthed poem of mine to pry the lyrics from the more shadowy parts of my skull,” Pangilinan said.

One of the favorite things that Pangilinan likes to do is “plagiarize” herself. Strange and unacceptable it may seem, but she writes incessantly -- be it poetry, songs or fiction. Each medium bleeds into the other so naturally that she does not even try to lie about it.

ADVERTISEMENT

Another song she particularly cited is “gone,” although it is not based on real-life experience. “I have a smaller writing account which has become my safe space online, with a handful of readers who I find myself indebted to for keeping me safe in quarantine,” Pangilinan explained.

“Writing ‘gone’ became my tribute to them, having been composed from the perspective of a fictional character who had no knowledge about the death of her husband.”

Pangilinan attests “gone” is a tearjerker. “The main vocal you hear on the song was one take, the very first I did,” she disclosed. “I asked if we could turn the studio lights off and it was cold in the booth.

“I’d like to thank Fern of Kindred Productions, who so generously provided backing vocals for the end of the song. He sings, ‘never left, never left you, baby,’ which references a quote from an unpublished draft I have. I can’t wait to share it.”

It was important for Pangilinan to find the right people and work on her EP to bring her vision to life. “I could hear the songs so clearly in my head and experimented briefly with production,” she said. “But with such a specific vision, I felt as if my lack of skill would do the songs injustice.

ADVERTISEMENT

“Most of the producers I’ve been working with up until that point were professionals, but I need someone who would bring a perfect balance of experience and youth, someone with that safe, ambitious drive, the same intense passion.”

Pangilinan thinks of someone who might be willing to put up with her more experimental ideas. “The specificities of sound that I didn’t have the expertise to methodically describe,” she pointed out.

“I have a habit of often resorting to hand gestures to describe auditory samples or effects I want done that I can’t name, and I felt so anxious, realizing that I sought only to be understood, even just a little. Even just the fundamentals.”

She needed a team with whom she can be honest and she cannot be thankful enough that she found the ideal guys to work with, with no inhibitions or apprehensions at all.

“I prayed about this dilemma for a while,” Pangilinan admitted. “I sought friends. I was at a loss, thinking, ‘Is this all it can be now?’ ‘Will these songs be doomed to perfection only in my head?’”

ADVERTISEMENT

Apart from Fern, the other guys at Kindred Productions who worked on Pangilinan’s EP, included Jorge, Vince, Byron and Obi whom she never met in person. “They came across my crowdsourcing tweet in the wee hours of some melancholic evening, when I felt desperate and confused and in need of direction,” she shared.

“I sent them the first recording of ‘afterparty’ as a sort of test, because the voice memo had been sent every which way to no real avail. I didn’t like the others’ attempts at it. They sounded too inorganic and unlike me.”

Two days later, Kindred returned to Pangilinan with two, separate demos and she cannot be thankful enough. “Just like that, I was indebted to them,” she said. “They are everything I was looking for -- and more.

“I cannot begin to explain just how much greater life is with them in it. They are talented to the point of my own embarrassment, but somehow, still incredibly humble and hilarious. Just like a bunch of intelligent kids.”

Pangilinan laments how it took her a long while to finally present the songs she composed. “I’m saddened that it took me this long to arrive at this place artistically, but I’m deeply overjoyed that I’ve arrived at all,” she declared.

ADVERTISEMENT

It took Pangilinan and her team quite a while to trim down the songs to seven for the EP. The newest is “afterparty,” while “lost” is the oldest.

Growing up, Pangilinan spent a lot of time categorizing what she did, what she wrote, what she made. “I don’t think I’ll ever do the same thing twice,” she says. “I’m sure I’ll try at least everything once.

“I will say, though, that I find myself consistently drawn to building a story. Everything I do for the next couple of years will all be part of the same story. And it’ll be fun, I think, to watch those pieces come together.”

For a 20-year-old, Pangilinan’s songs implore about unusual depth and special meaning in the lyrics. Breathing life into a song, immortalizing her truth and feelings into the lyrics and melody feels like a sigh of relief for her
.
“I wrote many of the songs years ago,” Pangilinan shared. “Recorded them with a semi-shattered iPhone in the wee hours [my natural habitat] and transferred the files onto a USB, then didn’t pay them any mind for at least two years.

“It was thereafter referred to as the ‘heartbreak hard-drive,’ which, I think, makes for an alternate title for the EP. I swore to myself I wouldn't open those songs until I was no longer saddened about what they were written of.

ADVERTISEMENT

“Here we are now, having rummaged through the files with a little less ache and a little more bravery, offering a body of work to the world that sounds exactly how I imagined it would. It is the first of my music that I’m truly, deeply, wholeheartedly proud to claim.”

ADVERTISEMENT

ADVERTISEMENT

It looks like you’re using an ad blocker

Our website is made possible by displaying online advertisements to our visitors. Please consider supporting us by disabling your ad blocker on our website.

Our website is made possible by displaying online advertisements to our visitors. Please consider supporting us by disabling your ad blocker on our website.