Day 19 – A song from your favorite album

I’ve really never given much thought about liking albums entirely. I usually like songs individually, regardless of which album they’re from. But if I were to choose one, I pick Under Southern Lights by Urbandub. And for my song, I choose Guillotine.

Under Southern Lights

After more than 10,000 albums sold, thousands of miles traveled around the country and some dizzying highs and lows, an energized Urbandub returned with Under Southern Lights in 2007.

“We experimented a lot on this album. We also tried to write songs far from the specific genre our fans are used to hearing from us. On this album we challenged ourselves musically in terms of creativity with the riffs, beats and melodies,” Alipe says. “The past albums we worked with a formula, writing songs inside our musical comfort zone, but for this album we tried to personally push the envelope a bit.”

Under Southern Lights, the latest album, boasts 10 tracks of Urbandub’s new approach to their own brand—their brilliance shines throughout a melodious rock tune and diverse songwriting. Alipe shares “We retreated to Cebu City for 2 months just to focus on writing. Then came back to Manila, did some fine tuning to the songs before recording them.”

“The recording was a great learning experience for the band. It was our first time to record with 2 inch tape rather than digitally which we were used to when we were still recording in Cebu. We also were privileged enough to be able to use specific types of equipment that we felt were needed for the songs, like different kinds of amplifiers or synthesizers,” Lalay Lim shared.

Asked about the album title, “The name is our tribute to Cebu City where we come from and where we did most of the writing for the album. It’s also a metaphor for our families in Cebu, being that they’re our inspiration and guiding light,” Alipe said.

The album starts with a shot, with that first single “Guillotine” – an indelible guitar hook and ferocious drums charge forth as Urbandub’s trademark mix of airtight vocal harmonies.

If you have compiled all Urbandub songs into your own greatest hits album, you probably get the impression of “change.” For a band like them, change is never that good. Urbandub is growing but not changing. They may be going to perform in a bigger arena, but they’ll still going to sweat the same. And still be going to produce the songs like we’ve known them for. “We wanna try to reach out to more people with this album,” says Gabby.