Two of the country’s best musicians let their guard, and their hair down, in this Esquire exclusive.
Reese Lansangan and Clara Benin first met during Elements Music Camp, an intensive music workshop for Filipino songwriters, but they were aware of each other’s music way before then. Benin says she discovered Lansangan on YouTube in high school and started following her there and on Tumblr. She was fangirling hard when she met Lansangan at the airport on the way to Dumaguete for Elements.
When Lansangan said she listened to some of Benin’s own music, the latter couldn’t help feeling giddy.
“Kinilig ako,” Benin says.
“I only knew ‘Be My Thrill’ at the time because of Elements and I think that was also the song Clara used for auditions so that’s what she played for the camp,” Lansangan says. “I supported her first album launch and when I got the CD, I couldn’t stop listening to it. As in I really admired her songwriting so much and also the production of that album was so great. I know she had a huge hand in that because she studied music production and I really loved the style. The writing was so mature, and even the melodies were something I loved to listen to. I kept it on repeat even until now. I still listen to (her albums) “Human Eyes” and “River Child.” I love Clara’s songwriting.”
Today, Lansangan and Benin are familiar names in the local indie music scene and arguably two of this generation’s best musical artists. They regularly play at the city’s favorite music haunts and, on March 9 and 10, both are leading the Filipino contingent at this year’s Wanderland Music and Arts Festival.
“It’s my first time to play in Wanderland,” Benin says. “But they actually approached me before. I was on hiatus then, staying on the (family) farm. I asked them to please invite me again. And they finally did.” The artist also recently did a show for local concert and events company Karpos, which produces Wanderland.
Lansangan, meanwhile, is taking the Wanderland stage for the second time after making her festival debut two years ago. She first auditioned to be part of the lineup in 2014, during Wanderband, which was a competition to find local artists to play alongside the international acts. As one half of folk-pop duo Reese and Vica, Lansangan didn’t quite make the cut, but made enough of an impression to be invited to play a few years later not just once but twice.
“When they invited me, I was like, ‘Talaga? Are you allowed to do that?!’” she says. “So it’s an honor for me to be invited and to be trusted to be one of the representatives of what Philippine music sounds like now. I hope I can do something a bit different from the first time.”
Lansangan says her parents tell her the very first song she could ever sing in full was the Willy Garte classic “Bawal na Gamot.” She was all of two years old.
“I don’t even remember,” she says now. “Hindi ko alam kung binobola lang nila ako, but they have videos daw na nabura sa Betamax.”
Lansangan’s father used to play guitar and trumpet and would make the young Reese sing along with him. It was a household filled with music—it woke them up in the morning and it played to lull them into sleep at night. Lansangan says her parents played nursery rhymes and classical music on autoreverse cassette tape.
“I thought everybody just made something, everybody had art materials, paint, whatever,” Lansangan says. "I would make my own accessories, my own jewelry. I just had that maker mentality.”
“I was too young to have a say with what I was listening to but that was my exposure and I have a feeling my love for rhymes and simplicity in saying words in a song came from those early memories of listening to nursery rhymes,” she says. “Also Broadway and Disney songs. They’re very straightforward in their lyrics and playful with their rhymes, and I think that I picked that up.”
Lansangan’s creative spirit extends far beyond music. Growing up, her parents provided her with markers and paint and other materials, which she used to draw and create art. It was an environment that nurtured her creativity so much that she thought art was something everybody was into. She also dabbled in fashion, having created a fashion line inspired by space suits after graduating from fashion school.
“I thought everybody just made something, everybody had art materials, paint, whatever,” she says. “I would DIY a lot of things because I was an only child until I was six when my sister came along. I would make my own accessories, my own jewelry. I just had that maker mentality.”
These days though, Lansangan expresses her art through music and chooses “musician” when asked which of her multi-hyphenated identities carries the most weight.
In 2015, she released her debut album called Arigato, Internet!, a collection of thoughtful, whimsical observations of life beyond love. The album gathered songs she had been performing in front of audiences for years and marked the formal arrival of a strong, confident and unique voice in OPM. Songs like “Grammar Nazi,” (a gentle admonition for people who are gramatically challenged), “Exploration No. 5” (a paean to curiosity and genuine wonder about the world around us), and “On Wednesdays We Wear Pink” (probably the best fan letter ever written about the movie Mean Girls) displayed Lansangan’s writing abilities—at turns wide-eyed and self-assured but never lacking in humor and smarts.
“I like talking about things that are unconventional or aren’t really talked about through music by other artists,” she says. “Like ‘Grammar Nazi’ is a song that’s different. It’s weird and surreal thing to have a song like that on the radio. ‘A Song about Space’ is about science and curiosity and all these innocent questions that you have about the world around you and the world beyond.”
“I like zeroing on those interesting things, and I feel like humor is a way for me to address those weird topics because they go together,” she adds. “You don’t have to take yourself too seriously but you’re also imparting a message. I like that wordplay and experimentation.”
Lansangan followed up Arigato, Internet! two years later with a four-song EP that showed off even more of her gift of stringing words together and setting all of it to music. Of Sound Mind and Memory, she says, tells of a person’s journey through life in four stages: “’Aristophanes’ is like the beginning; ‘Machines and Men’ is like your life and death plotted out; ‘For The Fickle’ is your heartbreak; and ‘Wildwood’ is (finding) your contentment.”
“When I write songs, I don’t think, ‘Pasok ba to sa tunog ko?’ If you concern yourself with having a theme sonically, it will be impossible."
These days, Lansangan admits it’s not as easy to write the songs with the same type of carefree spirit and whimsy like “Grammar Nazi.” It’s not so much the pressures brought about by having many more fans and listeners, but more of the pressure she puts on herself.
“It’s just an overall sense of crippling fear,” she says. “You expect a lot from yourself now: you sit down and decide to write a song, you have to have a song. But that’s not the case. Especially when I was just doing this for fun. I would have written two songs in a year and happy na ko dun. But now, you’re a musician, you have to write for you to keep going. Iba na yung boxes na tini-tick mo, there are more things you expect of yourself, not really for other people.”
In January, Lansangan released “Islands,” a slightly more upbeat track borne out of a collaboration with an electronic music producer friend. It’s a slight departure from the sound she is known for, but the artist says it wasn’t a conscious decision to veer away from the familiar.
“When I write songs, I don’t think, ‘Pasok ba to sa tunog ko?’ I just really come up with stuff,” she says. “I still have a lot of folk stuff, those that sound like Of Sound Mind and Memory. I have some that are ‘Grammar Nazi’ type, very playful. And then I have super dramatic pianos. And then I have ‘Islands.’ If you concern yourself with having a theme sonically, it will be impossible. I’m just banking on the fact that I wrote all of them. And hopefully they all sound like me. So yun lang yung commonality nila.”
Music was always going to be in Benin’s life whether she liked it or not. Thankfully, it was something she picked up and fully embraced. Otherwise, she doesn’t know what she’d be doing now.
“I remember my parents had a hard time with me because I didn’t really know what to do,” she says. “Music was just a hobby growing up. Every summer they would enroll me in all of these workshops so I could figure out what I really wanted to do. But in high school, I started really taking music seriously. And I started to write.”
"Music has always been there," Benin says. "Like I can’t imagine myself doing anything else, so might as well do that and study the business of it."
The daughter of Side A’s Joey Benin says her father forced her to take piano lessons as a kid. She didn’t hate it, but she gravitated more towards the guitar and, at 12 years old, she eventually requested for one, which her dad gave her. Undoubtedly, her father’s influence cannot be overstated. Side A fans would know that the band even has a song about her called “Clara’s Eyes.”
“I was there when they were recording that,” she says. “They even recorded my voice, in the beginning (of the song). I think I was four or five years old. I didn’t really think it was a big deal at the time, my dad singing about me.”
At the family farm in Bacolod, where life was slow and the internet was slower, Benin learned to master the six-string. As with most other musicians, she started by listening to other people’s music, changing up the arrangement and putting her own spin to it. She cites songs by Paramore, Dashboard Confessional and John Mayer and local indie darling Julianne as major influences. Soon Benin felt she was ready to write her own music.
“I studied music business in college,” she says. “Since high school, music has always been there. Like I can’t imagine myself doing anything else, so might as well do that and study the business of it.”
In 2014, Benin came out with her debut LP, Human Eyes. The record flaunts Benin as a triple threat: an accomplished songwriter, a cool and confident vocalist, and one hell of a guitar player. Benin in person seems quiet and reserved, and much of this personality reflects on the album, in relaxed, contemplative songs like “Dust,” “Closure” and “Cigarettes and Lighter.” She does get to let loose, though, in slightly more uptempo tracks like “Be My Thrill,” and “Easy.” It’s the kind of album you listen to on a breezy afternoon or on a late night drive home.
The singer-songwriter’s latest is a song called “Wrestle,” which she says was inspired by a recent rip with friends to Sydney, Australia.
“We were there for two weeks for a church conference and vacation,” she says. “There was this place there called Newtown, it was very…cinematic, very artsy. It felt like we were in a movie, that type of thing. I was very inspired by that place. And I actually mentioned it in the song.
“The song itself is about being content with where you are and how you are at that moment, no matter what,” she adds. “Life is a wrestle. There’s always something going on, that tension in life. It’s a song that I wrote, and something I sing to myself, ‘Okay this is where I’m supposed to be, even when I’m struggling or whatever.’”
"Life is a wrestle. There’s always something going on, that tension in life. It’s a song that I wrote, and something I sing to myself, ‘Okay this is where I’m supposed to be, even when I’m struggling."
At 25, Benin has barely scratched the surface of her potential, even though she already has several noteworthy notches on her career belt—playing at Music Matters Live in Singapore, sharing the bill with Kanye West at the Paradise International Music Festival, and recording the song “Araw’t Gabi” for an independent film.
But ask her what else she wants to accomplish and she answers simply, “I do wish to travel and perform more, especially out of the country also around the country. I just want to make more music and do more collaborations.”
As active members of the current local indie music scene, Lansangan and Benin have a unique perspective of what the scene is like these days. Esquire asked both of them what it’s like to be musicians in the age of digital streaming and #MeToo.
Reese: When we started out, it was relatively a quiet industry, I guess, for the indie musician. There was a time na magi-gig kami sa isang lugar tapos kami-kami lang yung tutugtog yung nandoon. Literally our friends would support us, and our bandmates, whoever was playing with us. It wasn’t really as thriving as a community as it is now. So it’s good there has been growth. I think also with the advent of Spotify and digital streaming it has made music more accessible to other people who don’t necessarily go to gigs. A lot of artists have emerged, not just males but also females, which is also great because that’s one the things that was lacking in the scene. It was almost all male represented. So that’s something good.
Clara: I agree. I like what you said that there are more female artists that are thriving today. Especially singer-songwriters. I feel like before, I opened for rock bands, or not even open, mga intermission number as a break from the loud music. This small acoustic girl for a break. Now there are prods that do all singer-songwriters.
Reese: All girls.
Clara: Yeah.
Reese: I just feel like we need to support one another more. There can be crab mentality in the culture. Success doesn’t happen in the same way for everybody. Some have been in it for a long time and are still hustling, some are just new to the scene but lucked out pretty easily. So it’s a different journey for everybody. We need to acknowledge that more. Be more supportive. The prods have been a big help in a way that they do these gigs that are curated. I like that they do all-female gigs.
"I just feel like we need to support one another more," Lansangan says. "There can be crab mentality in the culture. Success doesn’t happen in the same way for everybody."
Reese: I mentioned earlier that on Twitter, everybody’s watching everybody. It’s easy for your mistakes to be magnified. When you’re a public person, when you make a mistake, it’s in the public eye. A lot of times, the internet can be unforgiving when it comes to that, although there are things that are really beyond comprehension. Parang di mo ma-gets why some people would act a certain way, because it’s not right, improper, especially with sexual harassment. It’s not normal. It’s not something you will take lightly, especially for victims. It’s not the easiest to speak up. So it’s good that Twitter has become a platform for that but also I wish there would be more responsibility and accountability on both sides about who’s claiming what and who’s being blamed.
There are two sides to every story and I hope there would be fairness when it comes to any issue coming out. But it’s definitely great that these issues are coming to light and victims are starting to speak up. And if they know somebody who has experienced this and has spoken up, they get more courage to say something and that’s good.
"There are two sides to every story and I hope there would be fairness when it comes to any issue coming out," Lansangan says. "But it’s definitely great that these issues are coming to light and victims are starting to speak up."
Let’s remember that even though an act is unforgivable I believe that all people deserve forgiveness, but to a certain degree, I guess. I’m hoping that there has been change or serious reconsideration of actions done but I think we are all just human and di natin pwedeng patawan ng hatol yung isang tao, na yun na yung final kumbaga because we’re all in the same boat. We’re all human. We all make mistakes, all of us. It just so happens that not all mistakes are publicized.
Clara: All I can say is that the internet can be so mean. And I don’t think anyone deserves to be bullied no matter how much they’ve wronged people. Especially cyberbullying, because it spreads everywhere. Sometimes, you only know one side of the story.
Reese: It’s a touchy subject for us because we are close friends with people in the industry in general. It’s hard to see it happen. People you know being blamed, whether true or not, it still hurts as a friend, as a woman. It’s hard to address. But it’s true nobody deserves that public of a trial especially if the people speaking aren’t really involved in any way and if they’re throwing personal insults.
Reese and Clara are performing at Wanderland Music Festival on March 9 and 10 at the Filinvest City Events Grounds, Alabang, Muntinlupa. This year’s line-up includes Two Door Cinema Club, Honne, Gabrielle Aplin, Joan, SG Lewis, Unique, Charlie Lim, the Kooks, Masego, Alina Baraz, Clairo, Mac Ayres, Prep, Sandwich, and more. Visit wanderlandfestival.com.
In this story: Photographs by Shaira Luna • Produced and styled by Clifford Olanday • Makeup by Joan Teotico using NARS Cosmetics • Hair by Jhear Losada Abellar • Production assistants Lorenzo Kyle Subido and Ednalyn Magnaye Garcia • With thanks to Marriot Hotel Manila
From topmost: Olive tank top (on Reese) and tan skirt (on Clara) by H&M; Brown polo shirt (on Reese) and black T-shirt (on Clara) by H&M; Sweaters and earrings (worn throughout) by H&M.
