Joon Guillen has played various instruments for local bands such as Outerhope, Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man, (the ironically named) We Kick Ass for the Lord, the jazz band Fish Trio, and for his own bedroom project, A Shortcut to Mushrooms. He left Manila in 2007 to get a Master’s degree in IT in Hong Kong, where he is still presently based. As Modulogeek (www.modulogeek.com), Guillen has entered the world of electronic music and has begun to produce, even in its “jam” phase, what might be his finest work to date. I had the chance to ask Guillen some questions about his new project earlier this week.

Manila Bulletin: You’ve played in different bands with fairly different sounds and aesthetic sensibilities; how did you arrive at the style of music you’re making now as Modulogeek?

I can’t honestly say that I arrived at this particular sound. It’s more like I stumbled onto it. When I started out (as Modulogeek) I was just introducing myself to the electronic genre. I would listen and I would say, okay, I am doing THIS from now on! But then I’d discover something else and find myself rethinking things. It’s been a constant cycle of finding, learning, and moving on—a “modulo operation,” for the math geeks out there —that I don’t think will ever stop.

MB: As a multi-instrumentalist, can you tell us something about your songwriting process and how the monome has changed it, if it has?
What songwriting process (laughs)? Well, my compositional development has had more focus on working with software and apps, predominantly technical stuff. But they’re all inside the computer, and it’s so easy to make things sound very mechanical and devoid of life. A controller like a monome serves to add that human element to the music, because it is controlled by me, and I allow the music to have human “mistakes.” But I suppose the greatest contribution of the monome for me is the community of users behind it (http://post.monome.org/) who are all just so awesome sharing music and information with each other openly. All the things I’ve learned I owe to them.

MB: What about Hong Kong? Do you think the city has affected your process, or your music in general?
Definitely, but not in some romantic way that you may think. I did try to get into bands and stuff, rather pathetically, and so far there’s nothing. Maybe I haven’t met the right contacts yet, but whatever. So I was in this desperate situation where I had nobody to make music with, so I decided to do things myself and I thought electronic music was perfect for that. I absolutely cannot imagine myself becoming a singer/songwriter (laughs).

MB: You played your first solo gigs here in Manila a short while back. Was that the first time you’ve performed on your own, without a band? How did you find it?
Oh it was quite scary. When I make songs in my bedroom I don’t think about audience; I just upload them somewhere and people will either like it or not, and that’s cool. It’s not so when performing live. You can really bore the hell out of a crowd, especially with music that doesn’t have any lyrics to hang on to. Generally speaking, the pressure comes from when I try to do everything myself, because it’s just easier for self-doubt to surface.

MB: You also played sets at Saguijo as half of < 3.14 (with Donna Macalino) and as part of the Aldus Santos Trio (with Aldus Santos and Aids Arcega); can you tell us something about the ideas or influences behind both collaborations/projects?
With < 3.14 I thought it would be great to add an organic element to the music, not just pre-recorded loops. Plus, Donna wanted to play guitar. We thought we’d just jam most of it —figure out a semblance of structure in our songs, and just wing the rest.
Aldus asked me if I could do the beats for him as his regular beats guy would be away on gig date. He sent me his demo songs produced with his 8-track, and I came up with a minimal arrangement of beats and loops. The sound is inspired by several artists that I was listening to at that time, but I would say I was mostly trying to make it feel Postal Service-y.

MB: What’s next for Modulogeek?
Hmm, I don’t know really. There are some plans to make a concept EP, but I’m not sure if that’ll come to fruition. We’ll see. Meantime I’ll be releasing a really short EP of some jams based on the setup I had when I played a couple of gigs in Manila last October. Also I am making a compilation of songs that I have done in the past year and putting it out as one pseudo-album. It’s something I wanted to do to mark that phase where I was just learning the ropes and finding the sounds and trying to rip off other artists (laughs). Hopefully my next projects will be ambitious, more thematic, more technically impressive, and moderately original.