Rapture and the Rhapsodist

by Karl R de Mesa
http://www.geocities.com/thelateisabel/

In the dreams of those she haunts, Isabel is always leaving. She has been sighted barefoot and pale, by various sleepers, at the doorstep of a familiar downtown cinema, the gates of a university building at closing time, departing a smoky club and exiting a convenience store at twilight. She vanishes when she steps to the curb, just as the high beams of an approaching car freeze her. Those who do wake, often wake in sweat.

“I was playing with a visual concept, a series of posters showing this half-familiar woman always in transit,” says Allan Hernandez, explaining the basis of the name and the band’s wraith-like, female persona.

The music of THE LATE ISABEL is the origin, product and nature of this haunting rolled into a single koan. It is music that makes of funerals and wakes a celebration -- a time to sing and a time to dance as tears run down your face. The character of Isabel, the vignettes and scenes of her life (and probably her demise) live on in the band’s songs. Aural creations that crest and break like a wave of grief to wash over both viscera and brain with the force of psychedelia, ambient, shoegazer, dark wave and goth.

The band started in 1998 as MADELINE USHER then renamed itself OLD WORLD CHARM in 1999, shedding and gaining a few members along the way. Earlier still it was a death metal outfit named THANATOPSY, and so on to THE LATE ISABEL DELGADO, now remembered even more easily -- and fondly -- without her surname. The band is currently composed of WAWI NAVARROZA (vocals), ALLAN HERNADEZ (guitars), JP AGCAOILI (drums), and ROVAL BACALE (bass), all veterans of the Manila goth-punk scene.

Coming of age in the post-punk era, the quartet grew up with a love for bands that eschewed the freewheeling go-go of ‘80s mainstream music, groups like The Cure, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Clan of Xymox, Bauhaus, Joy Division and the gaggle of artists under the 4AD banner. With this came the intuitive understanding that music had to function on all to achieve a holistic effect.

“Art is not an isolated experience. It is deeply personal and deeply communal. I believe that the visual aspect of the band needs to be included in the package,” relates JP Agcaoili.

“If I could put music, painting, poetry, literature all in one package, then I would love to do that,” agrees Wawi Navarroza.

Their debut album, DOLL’S HEAD, is made up of eight exceptional tracks composed of equal parts lament, anguish, awe and snapshots of everyday tragedies. From the sinuous and seductive chant of the title track, the hungry eloquence of “Fingers Around the Wineglass,” the demented agitation of “Follow (The Mad March),” to the exploration of the urban abyss that is “Midnight City,” the record is indeed the culmination of two years’ labor in the subculture fringe.

Meanwhile, their live performance has been praised as a “tour through the dark corners of . . .dreams,” and that, “to watch The Late Isabel live is to be intrigued. . .and entranced.”

DOLL’S HEAD crystallizes the quartet’s skill for leading the listener to precision rapture via a swirling palette of textures and sonic landscapes that bring to fore the monsters, beautiful or otherwise, lurking in the depths. Proof that being haunted can be a ravishing, rhapsodic experience.