It's the classic trip-hop set-up: 2 quiet Filipino guys in the background to tweak knobs & play instruments, with a hot Filipina female vocalist to enthrall

DRIP is the triphop/electronica/drum&bass group behind Identity Theft - the first full-length album released under a Creative Commons (by-nc-sa 3.0 Philippines) license in the Philippines.

It's the classic trip-hop set-up: two quiet Filipino guys in the background to tweak knobs and play instruments, with a hot Filipina female vocalist to enthrall the audience with her voice. But Manila, Philipines based DRIP goes beyond mere trip-hop band clichés: they are meta-glamorous, a little dark, and seductively experimental. “Capable of giving you simulated bliss,” wrote the Manila Times about the former trio and now a quartet. With an EP independently released in August of 2003 and constant live performances, Drip's cult status grew with Manila's musical cognoscenti.

WHAT PEOPLE SAY ABOUT IDENTITY THEFT:

"...An inspired trip where the songs deliver you to a universe in ways that the world’s best comic books can. Gloomful and spectacular, the best urban narrative in local music 2008..." - Cris Ramos (of Revolver)- Manila Times, December 30, 2008

"..A lot of promising stars defied the sophomore slump and came out with really good follow-ups like Drip, Up dharma Down and Pedicab..." - Quark Henares

"..You will never feel cooler than when you're listening to Drip. I don't mean that smug kind of poser-cool that comes with patronizing the band of the moment―I'm talking about that glorious experience when their music creates a world between your ears, dark and dramatic, a nocturnal urban narrative with you as the central character beset by sudden dangers and unexpected pleasures. With scratches and samples, keyboards and beats, and that relentless, yearning, sensual voice, Identity Theft delivers seeming contradictions―fierce vulnerability, emotional electronica―and changes your life for the better..." - Luis Katigbak, QLE Awards 2008

"...Drip, a trip-hop group from the Philippines, will be releasing the first full-length Filipino CC licensed album, Identity Theft, this Saturday, 3/15, at 8PM at Magnet Café High Street, Bonifacio Global City, Taguig. Identity Theft will be released under a CC BY-NC-SA license and will released as an enhanced CD containing song stems as a means to better facilitate remixers and DJs..." - creativecommons.org, March 14 2008

"Electronica outfit Drip’s second album, “Identity Theft,” builds from the rather cold architecture of its predecessor to reach vertiginous heights. The height and ambition of which can be heard from its first track, coincidentally titled Fallen. Sniper-precise, the song begins with Beng Calma’s vocal sounding as menacing as a predatory swoop and as enticing as a torch singer swoon. But this is mere preamble to what follows as soon as the rest of the band joins the fray.

Groove-hungrier than the last time around, songs such as Faultless (featuring Radioactive Sago Project/Wahijuara guitarist Junji Lerma) and live favorite Swanker demonstrate their multifarious arsenal of beats. On the latter, it seems particularly single-minded in its intent: from the elemental pounding of its rhythms to howling wind delivery of the vocal. If nothing else, the music is as tight as rows of perfect Tetris blocks.

But apart from that, it’s quite audible that they haven’t forsaken the gorgeous pop of previous hit Song Number 9. Rather, songs like initial single Morning After Pill show a refinement of their craft that allows their sophisticated arrangements to effortlessly play off of but remain unobtrusive on the melodic hooks. On tracks like Listening its appeal is almost un-electronic in that it’s almost as if the boys in the band decided to pick up and play actual band instruments instead of hard-drives and drum machines. (But with better production values.)

The album also features other guests such as Sound’s Sach Castillo on the aforementioned single and Up Dharma Down’s Armi Millare on Blood-Letting, the album’s slow-breather. Love in a colder climate, indeed.

“Identity Theft” is the group’s first LP with underground hip-hop figure Caliph8 on turntables and beat samples. Whether or not it’s his influence, the album seems more well rounded than their debut, “Far Side of the World,” but it’s perhaps more accurate to attribute this development to the group becoming more cohesive as a unit. But whatever it is, it’s clear that for Drip the party’s really just about to begin." - Erwin Romulo, The Outsider, philstar.com 7 March 2008

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