When Time Magazine dubbed them as one of the top 5 Asian music acts everybody should lend an ear to for 2008, The Out of Body Special took this as a worthwhile challenge for them to perform as well as people hailed them to be. Three singles later, it seems as they were indeed good enough for the rave, with music that continues to make listeners sway and bob their heads to. And that was just the beginning.

As soon as their third single, Sexy Beast, came out, the band quickly hopped into a bus and went on a nationwide trek. This was the Siege Tour, a string of concerts known for showcasing hard-hitting rock bands. Wait, hard-hitting rock bands? How could The Out of Body Special, geeks of the groove and officers of funk, possibly fit in? Be that as it may, crowds from all of the concert stops watched. And listened. And banged their heads. And put up devil horns with their hands. “We didn't expect the response we got,” vocalist Los shares, “but it was overwhelmingly fun. We just went out there and did what we do, and the people were into it.” Say what you must that they were but a mere respite for the slew of the heavy, guitar-driven bands on the same tour, it looks more like how Time described OBS fairly accurately – you should give these guys a listen.

After a month and a half of touring, the surprises just kept on coming. Apart from opening the recent NU Rock Awards, the band was nominated, and subsequently won best new artist honors that same night as well. There wasn't just a row of judges who helped pick who won what; winners were also determined by the radio station's listeners.

And yes, all this is simply the beginning. Even if 2008 is nearly over, no doubt that The Out of Body Special will continue to spread their gospel of groove even more, and will continue to do so in the coming years. It's not too late to bob those heads – grab a copy of their debut album “Is Love”, available in all major record bars. 

Influences and 'originality'

Musicians will readily admit to having influences. Everyone listens to music while growing up, and a fascination with music, with certain types of it or with certain artists is the reason why a lot of musicians are musicians today. We list these influences on websites, when conversing with friends, when staring at the ceiling at night. My influences lie mainly in the pop-grunge-rap-metal confluence of mid-'90s, but I’d like to think my tastes have broadened since by in turn checking out the influences of my favorite artists - the Beatles, Costello, Steely Dan, Zep, etc.

Musicians might copy some elements of influences, simply for the fact that they are the basis of how we would like to sound. I’ve tried to replicate the guitar tones of my influences because I thought they were great, and the tone I look for today isn’t too far off from those.

Of course, there is a difference between that and outright plagiarism. Coldplay was accused of ripping off Satriani’s "If I Could Fly" – I’d like to think that this was one of those cases when phrases and melodies of an influence leak into a composition unintentionally.

That being said, I don’t think that influences are an integral part of an artist’s 'originality’. Influences form the foundation of what we know about music, and however we choose to create our own sound, our own tunes, is grounded on that. Filmmaker Kidlat Tahimik in a recent interview talked about listening to his sariling duwende as the takeoff point for his art. I’d like to think of my musical sariling duwende as the child of the duwende of all my influences, and that my bands’s duwende is the product of all the band members’ duwende.