Gold Soundz: Foaming at the Mouth with Diego Castillo
for Scout Magazine
I had no doubts that the door I stood in front of led to Diego Castilloâs flat. After all, the music playing on the other side was so loud, I heard it echoing through the apartment halls the moment I exited the elevator.
âThatâs what billions of people complain about,â he said with a laugh after welcoming us. âYou listen to The Shins, donât you?â
The band playing isnât actually The Shins, but a band called XTC, and with a mischievous glint in his eye, he tells us that he suspects that The Shins may have stolen a few tricks from them. He walks over to the turntable in his living room and drops the needle on a specific track of the record to prove his point. He speaks candidly and enthusiastically, as if he knows the bands by heart. After he excuses himself to have a cigarette on the balcony, we sit in his living room surrounded shelves packed with records and CDs. I realize that he speaks exactly like he does on his online radio show, Foaming at the Mouth, which is for all sorts of folks, from casual listeners to obsessive High Fidelity-level geeks. He takes free rein to play whatever he wants regardless of genre or age from his eclectic library of music. Over the course of a single show, you can hear him air staples from his personal indie rock canon, to old-school hip-hop and funk that he found in a secondhand record bin, and the latest upcoming local bands, along with his own banter. He may call it rambling, but what he says is fascinating, humorously irreverent, and ultimately engaging.
Then again, that should come as no surprise since he has been talking about music for years. Before Diego Castillo became the guitarist of Sandwich, one half of the DJ duo The Diegos, and the co-writer and co-director of Rakenrol with Quark Henares, he was a seventeen-year old kid who stayed at home with nothing to do on Saturday evenings but listening to records and an avid listener of the legendary and now-defunct radio station, NU107.
âI heard Myrene Academia, my bandmate in Sandwich and former announcer of Not Radioâwhich I must say was the best show ever on Philippine radio,âsay that we could have heard the new Fugazi or L7 if only the Philippine mail didnât steal her CDs.â He showed up at NUâs front doorstep eagerly with his own copies of those albums, eventually becoming one of the stationâs own DJs as well.
It may have been years since that happened, but heâs still fueled by an enthusiasm to share music to whoever may be willing to listen. He chose the phrase âfoaming at the mouthâ because it refers to someoneâs over-the-top appreciation about something, like a rabid dog. Putting up a Spotify playlist wasnât enough for him, so he decided to talk about music and get nutty over it as well like he did in his days at the NU107 studio.
However, when it comes to Foaming at the Mouth, his recording process just involves him, his music library, and Garageband, from the comfort of his own flat. No frills, just talk and tracks. When he posted the first episode of Foaming at the Mouth, he expected around ten people to listen to it at the very most, out of the several Facebook friends he tagged. The show spread by word-of-mouth on the internet, and now it tops the indie and alternative charts of Mixcloud, such as his OPM special which reached over 1500 listens. Then again, the show isnât about the numbers, but the music.
 âWho even listens to anybody talk for three hours anymore?â he says in disbelief considering how peopleâs listening habits become more jagged and distracted straight in this day and age. After all, itâs one thing to listen to a radio show when you have no other choice while youâre in a car, but itâs another to listen while sitting in front of a computer with the internetâs wealth of songs to choose from. But still, people are listening, to which he says, âIâll record and have world domination from home.â
The next step in his scheme is to hold Foaming at the Mouth live, whether through a web stream or an actual event where fans can go onstage. âIâll say, âHereâs the new Spoon song, what do you think?â at may tatawag. Yun na! May totoong discourse. Itâs tangible na may kausap ako at the end of the line.â He wants to hear people tell him what they think about the music, which is why he encourages people to e-mail him. âIâm trying to tell kids that they donât have to like the songs. The point is to have your own opinion of it.â Other than that, heâs planning to have an artist series separate to the show where heâll have guest bands to play songs that have made an impact on them as musicians, such as what theyâre listening to or what made them want to play music to begin with. Itâs to get people to understand the impact of doing something as simple as saying why you like a song.
âTo foster a community is my end goal,â he says, âIf Iâm able to share new music with some kid who happens to be in Davao and Cebu and get them interested in these weird bands, Iâm happy.â After all, the music Diego Castillo plays on Foaming at the Mouth goes farther than his flatâs door, through the internet airwaves, and to the ears of kids who are hungry for new music beyond the standard radio thoroughfare. Those kids start talking about music and sharing it with others, and then some of those kids even go on to start their own bands who find new listeners, and so on and so forth. And the music plays on. Thatâs the way it ought to be, and thatâs the way itâs going to stay.
Written by Mariah Reodica
Photos by Aly Cabral
