User:Techy Romantics

While the Techy Romantics are clearly based on the magic of electronica, there isn’t a hint of contrivance here. Everything sounds natural, everything flows freely. There is no strategy, there is no plan. Beats begin breathing, guitars come a-stirring, vocals creep in, and then the songs, they just come alive. And it’s not anarchy, it’s not chaos, because there is a lovely order in things. There’s just this powerful surge of energy that nobody can resist.

That cosmic force is exactly what greeted Ryan Villena, Dondi Virrey, and Camyl Besinga that Sunday afternoon in 2008, when the three, for the heck of it, decided to jam. There had already been a Techy Romantics on myspace, but it was just Dondi and his instrumental electronic goodies. That Sunday afternoon, armed with experience (Ryan had been playing drums and guitar for a number of bands since high school), deep-seated desires (Camyl had always wanted to sing in a band but never really got the chance to do so), and a laptop (Dondi had already been composing stuff on his Mac), a quasi-big bang ensued, two songs immediately formed.

But there’s more where that came from. In less than a month, the Techy Romantics have written enough songs to fill the usual gig sets. And gig sets, they’ve filled to the brim—enveloping the room with their brand of sound, pervading empty spaces with their surreal Techy Romantics vibe, touching base with the audience, swelling to form a collective intoxication. Even Techy Romantics can’t help but succumb to the beat.

And that’s why, the Techy Romantics say, they’re best experienced on a lazy Sunday afternoon. When life is slow, but everything else is expectant.

They list down The Cure, The Cardigans, and New Order as their major influences, but the band is wary to give this life-form they’ve created a name. It’s not that they’d rather not be labeled, it’s that “we also don’t know what kind of music we’re playing,” Camyl says.

Less than a year into being the Techy Romantics, the band is set to release their first full-length record. The beats can’t be contained, the energy, can’t be denied. That cosmic Techy force is just itching to be felt.