Plaka Notes #17: Cutterpillow: Tribute Album by Offshore Music
When done right, a tribute album can open your ears to a lot of new artists. Too bad our musical ecosystem comes up way short right now...
My first forays into cosplaying as a music critic—and admittedly, I still am cosplaying over a decade in—was inspired by the British music press. Specifically, it was inspired a bunch of back issues of the much-missed magazine Q that I started buying when I was in high school.
It was, of course, not the only music magazine coming out of the UK—there were a lot that I never had access to, and more so now that they don’t print at all—but the fact that there were so many suggested so many angles you can take when writing about, admittedly, the same popular acts over and over again. Artist interviews, song recommendations, album anniversaries, that sort of thing. One good outcome is that it’s formed this pretty robust, collective memory of how things were in British popular music. Someone out there will remember a landmark event worth celebrating.
Not so much here. Granted, I say this knowing very well that I did not catch the heyday of the entertainment press in general, and the music press in particular. We had “song hits” magazines with lyrics (and guitar tabs!) to the hit songs of the day, sure. Back in the 1970s and 1980s we had radio stations whose content skewed heavily towards music, although not necessarily into geeky territory. But we don’t have that collective memory. We don’t mark the past that often, and when we do, it tends to be in whispers. We focus on the present, which isn’t bad in itself, but you know… it can be one note.
I was thinking of all that while listening to Cutterpillow: Tribute Album. Released by Offshore Music, the record label run by Pinoy pop legend Ely Buendia, it marks thirty years since the Eraserheads’ defining record was released by having a bunch of (relatively) new artists reinterpret the entire thing.
It’s a pretty shrewd decision, if only because the Eraserheads is such a big figure in what little collective memory we do have, that we tend to think only of their hits and not their albums. Here’s a chance for Cutterpillow—the band’s best-selling album—to define itself beyond being the record where the equally seminal “Ang Huling El Bimbo” is. It’s also a good playground for Offshore’s eclectic roster: the boundary-pushing yet crowd-pleasing nature of the original lends a lot of leeway to the newcomers to do what they see fit.
And yet, perhaps because of the iconic nature of the original material, there really isn’t a lot of genre-bending that goes on. For the most part, the only changes you’ll hear go around more modern and polished production, and perhaps the individual quirks of the artists. (Like, Ena Mori doing “Cutterpillow”, in hindsight, sounds pretty obvious—although I must point out that her newest single, “Sink”, is the complete opposite.) One track that stood out for me for daring to go further is Aviators’ cover of “Poorman’s Grave”, making much play of the grim nature of the lyrics by embracing their post-punk side and initially disrupting the jauntiness of the original.
The smooth jazz kid in me is also attracted to Alyson’s cover of “Huwag Mo Nang Itanong”, further embracing the original’s laid-back beat without being a copy of the other cover of the song I am reminded of, from MYMP.
The Eraserheads did receive the tribute album treatment before. Actually, I think it was that tribute album—ultraelectromagneticjam!, cheekily partially named after the radio station that spearheaded it—that started the trend. (A year later, the folks at Myx would release Kami nAPO Muna, the first of two tributes to the Apo Hiking Society. And then these tributes were everywhere.) By the time, the nostalgia the band evoked wasn’t that old—Buendia left the group in 2002, and the band eventually evolved into Cambio a couple of years later—but it helped bring to the surface a lot of acts that were on the fringes of what was then another heyday in Filipino alternative. (Jazz musician Isha’s version of “Torpedo” remains a favorite.) That was an interesting time, not just because you got to hear these classics done differently, but because—and this is important if you’re a casual music fan—there was a good chance you’d stumble upon someone new.
It’s very likely my thoughts on Cutterpillow: Tribute Album is down to the Niko of 2005 being different from the Niko of 2025. I mean, see the first paragraph. Music critic cosplay. I can’t call myself a casual listener anymore, although if there’s a spectrum then I am still far from the cool crowd and the gatekeepers. I do appreciate this record’s existence, both because of the novelty angle and the fact that I got to reappraise what is apparently one of the most important records in Filipino music. But, as I wrote a couple of months ago, we have always been terrible with our history. We are so obsessed with the present that any act of alluding to the past, even as inspiration, becomes some sort of hipster card, used and abused to prove supremacy of knowledge and taste over others.
I was considering two other records to feature in this month’s Plaka Note. Blaster released his second solo record, Last Fool Show, a few weeks back, and while it’s very much bursting with youthful energy and some degree of experimentation, as I outlined before, the first thought I had was how it often reminded me of the big names of 90s alternative. I definitely thought of Ely and Rico Blanco at some points during the record. But pointing that out so publicly just makes you a nerd, doesn’t it?
The other record I had in mind was Hiraya Manawari, a new EP from Jerms, aka Jermaine Choa Peck of the (now dormant?) indie folk group the Ransom Collective. Admittedly my lack of intimate exposure with the group made me wary of diving into this for the Once Monthly—maybe eventually—but I immediately latched on to the idea of “a clubby Bayang Barrios” or “a more accessible ((( O )))” and… did you name drop again, Niko? You think you’re better? We don’t need a lesson—just tell us what you think!
Maybe if more people were willing to give space to what inspired these artists. Maybe connecting the dots would be more tolerable, if not palatable. But things have drastically changed in the last decade, even. When I started the music critic cosplay back in 2012, there were several independent outfits covering the local scene. You had larger players like Bandwagon staking the space and bringing the best of us forward regionally. You had traditional media outlets—newspapers, cable TV, FM radio—doing more than a little bit of lip service. Now, we’re left with a handful of gatekeepers who are happy just preaching to the choir, or glorified fashion magazines who have little to say, and the rest of us have to do the work of going through Spotify, be at the mercy of social media algorithms, and not really discover anything. Or, if we do, we aren’t incentivized—the social kind, I mean—to share those acts. We become gatekeepers first and foremost, which ironically scuttles any newcomer’s chances at larger success.
Cutterpillow: Tribute Album is, first and foremost, a showcase of Offshore Music’s interesting roster, but I feel its potential impact is muted by the lack of follow-through from outside the organization. It’s definitely not the record label’s fault, but the changes we’ve seen in the landscape, and our lack of collective memory, and our fascination with the shiny and new and profitable—nothing against P-pop, but P-pop, anyone?—means this tribute album risks singing towards a void. If only we had a music press similar to the Brits—and I know that’s also contracting, but it’s harder to break something down that’s been established for longer—then maybe, just maybe…
Ah, perhaps I doth protest too much. Cutterpillow: Tribute Album is an interesting exercise, and personally, it’s worth going out of your way to listen to it, if only for the novelty and the discovery aspects. (Note to self: go through Pixie Labrador’s discography next.) And maybe you’ll find yourself in your own rabbit hole, like I am, although it’s too soon to tell. But for the majority of us, well, too bad it will likely just end there, because the world has changed differently from the last time these things happened a lot.
Also on the Once Monthly
I think the only other time I mentioned a new release from Offshore Music acts is when I squeezed in Eliza Marie’s debut, As Above So Below, in a greater discourse on Filipino pop wrapped around a Bini album review. (She appears alongside Mi Mi in the tribute album’s take on “Waiting for the Bus”.) I also mentioned Ena Mori there, for what it’s worth.
Also, Playlist #30 is about coziness and also isn’t about coziness, while Song Trigger #2 is about Lee Hi and also isn’t about Lee Hi, at least not entirely.