Hijo - Slow Rock Volume ½ EP

Do you know what happened when a band broke up and vocalist leaves the room and kept every dude hanging??? You know what.... great things happens! Yi! cheesy intro! Everybody probably knows about Hijo already. Bamboo left the band and Nathan, Ira, and Vic Mercado was like hell yeah let's get some keyboardist and another guitar artist to bring some fat thing on the rhythm and let's make our own music - that's HIJO.

This is old news already. The band started way back in 2011 and their debut EP Slow Rock Volume ½ started getting attention at the first quarter of 2012. It's a four track album that have different sets of arrangement and different feel on every song. But let me talk about how awesome the actual CD first and then I'll cover the sound quality of the recording and then we will dig more on the actual songs.

The CD Packaging

I am amazed on the quality from the jewel case, to the glossy inlet and to the white CD with hard to read markings. When I was holding it in the record store I was like "sulit na sulit" even i have not heard about their songs yet.

Front

Back

The front and back cover of the CD was very simple, the back cover contains the track list and some credits to the record company but wait till you see the inner fold.

Inner Fold

The inlet was produced with high quality - glossy, embossed, textured, feels expensive! And I know this thing does not contribute to the quality of music but it brings a punch to overall experience. What's inside are Credits from the band members, track lists, and lyrics which i really like. Not everyone is doing it this way today but heck if you only have four tracks, why not.

Sound Quality

Overall the tracks were nicely recorded and it's a little loud too. However the first track Tamalee, to me, sounds boxed, felt like the guitar and drums cannot breath. Going to the second track, Dahil Sa Iyo, there's a nice separation of instruments and equally calibrated against each other. My poor D60 did not give justice to the actual CD, if you move your eyes around the image you will notice the Hijo logo and on the other side are the tracks perfectly embossed.

Slow Rock Volume ½ EP

There are only four tracks in this EP -

1. TAMALEE
2. DAHIL SA IYO
3. TORQUEMADA
4. DI MO NA KAYA

First run on all four songs to be honest I didn't quite get what the heck was Hijo. So I burned it to my iPod and tried to listen to it more, re-read the lyrics and tried to work my tiny brain out.

Tamalee was an instant favorite. Sounds to me like all five of them were on steriod. I love the layering of the two guitars and Nathan's bass glued them together. I just wish it was recorded clearly or maybe I need to watch them live to get a better appreciation of the materials. This song's a bi-language song - for a second I thought i was still listening to Riveramaya and or Bamboo.

Second track Dahil Sa Iyo put me on another dimension, a quick shift of phase. Tango-sounding-felt-like-i-need-to-dim-the-lights was were I was taken. But there's a lot of mix though out the song, it started very smooth, piano and guitar pluck was exceptional and then mixed with guitar solo and the signatured-gapang-bass. Turns out its not a boring song but a highly technical one.

Torquemada is what you should expect from this lineup. This may be a sleeper from the rest. The last track from the EP 'Di Mo Na Kaya was a good wrap up, again the dynamic of each instrument is just right, this was arranged nicely not to over power each instruments and the piano/keyboard gives a good flavor to the loneliness of the song. I was very lonely after I listened to the whole album.

Which brings me to one thing that I didn't like - it's too short! Bitin! It was very dragging, heavy, and after 'Di Mo Na Kaya I was like still wanting to recover and there should be 1 or two more tracks after.

Now I am thinking why there's no follow up? where's the full album? it's been like almost 2 years since they put this out. I don't know, I don't have any idea but hey if you see this EP in the record store (bought mine at Astroplus Shangrila) pick it up and you won't regret it. Sleeves pa lang panalo na!
 

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