Vigo: Manilanimal by Khavn

"Manilanimal" is not Jean Vigo's fifth film.

Vigo is a six member chamber-jazz avant-rock collective from Manila who take their name from Jean Vigo, the French filmmaker who died from tuberculosis in 1934 at age 29 leaving behind a slim filmography that despite comprising a mere two films—L’Atalante and Zero For Conduct—blazed a trail through cinematic history. The associations between the band and the man have to do with how both are proprietors of certain modes of ardor and certain modes of insanity. Love and lunacy. And a little of that fierce romanticism that a life that ends before its time and as its cresting.

The musical base matter of Vigo are the songs of bandleader and pianist and vocalist Khavn. Part inversions of kundiman, the Filipino equivalent of chanson, and part modern day pop balladry, it is the sticky melancholia of these songs that become the primordial muck for Vigo’s new adventures in hi-fi. But it is the dynamic created by the coming together of these six disparate musicians and disciplines that make it come to flesh. Bassist Simon Tan and drummer Paolo Manuel bring a freeform, playful looseness to the rhythm section. Guitarist Kakoy Legaspi subverts the role of the guitar as flourish and backbone teasing new forms from familiar structures. And the wild cards of soundscaper Caliph8 and female vocalist Tao Aves, thicken the atmosphere with an otherworldly presence. As a collective, Vigo filter Khavn’s old-fashioned broken-heart-on-sleeve pop sentiment through a sieve of jazz sextet smoke, chamber pop noir and glitchpop trickery into a mode of hurt and desire that catches fire as the brief life of the man they stole their name from.

Awards: Best Music - Urian;
Best Original Song - Famas

Since his introduction to the music of long-dead white men at age 6, Khavn has done many things to pianos: set them ablaze, cut them with axes, played them for 13 hours straight. In his hands, pianos become versatile mediums of violence and tenderness that produce label-defying compositions — not exactly avant or pop; not quite jazz or punk.

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