A Band Called Kjwan

Uploaded an article in my GMAP Pinoy TV column about my interview with Kjwan. This happened before they released their second album. The interview was for Anthem magazine. I got to meet Marc and Kelley, who were both very nice and smart and articulate and -- this impressed me the most -- frank.

I love Marc and Kelley! Especially since they know how to make a girl blush. Marc blew me a kiss at the Sugarfree launch and Kelley gave me a hug at the NU Rock Awards *skwee skwee* ^_^ .

Here’s an excerpt:

What has life been like after the release of your first album?

Marc: The first album defined us -- that’s what we observed -- as a macho core rock and roll band because of “Daliri.” I mean, we did release a couple of other songs but like most albums, one song stands out… From then until we started writing songs again, we kept on gigging and gigging, then we added Boogie Romero, who is also from Dicta License (as is Kelley -- ed.), into the mix so when we started writing songs, they became more ambient…

Kelley: The first album was an experiment. And what Marc was saying na rin, after the first album was done, it was our experiment, eh. We got together, we recorded all the songs that came to mind. In the second album, we knew each other better. I knew Jun more, I knew Marc even more, I finally got to jam with Jorel, Bogie came in.

So going into the second album, our mindset was a whole new thing. Yeah, we get defined also by our singles, but even in the first album, there were a lot of different aspects to our individual musicality din that showed out influences, rock and roll, R&B, we listen to a lot of different things, drum n bass, soul, electronica. So all of these mixtures, we’re more fully aware of these influences and we’re trying to translate this into a whole new different thing for the second album. Ang daming ups and downs din in the middle that the band got into. We survived, we got our guns going. We have a good team now. We’re really confident about our product, especially for the second album.

Read the whole article here