MUSIC: Deeper Manila

An independent record label dedicated to house and downtempo sounds, Deeper Manila is the brainchild of Justin de Guzman and Kass Ilagan.

Justin cites London-based label Defected Records as the main inspiration for putting up Deeper Manila. Justin mentioned, "we wanted to put our music out for the public to hear. Luckily, I had a distributor available at the time. We needed a name and after just a few trials, we decided on Deeper Manila Records, or simply, Deeper Manila."

He also added, "there are very few house music producers in the country. I wanted the Filipinos to be know about local house music, which exists. I wanted to let the world know that there is an existing house music scene in the Philippines. This will promote tourism if we are successful."

Despite having difficulty promoting house music, Justin is confident that the market is continuously growing. Thanks to the steady flow of events and parties featuring international electronic dance artists, there is, now, a growing demand for great house music especially from places like Pampanga, Cagayan de Oro and Davao.

Deeper Manila has its own pool of local and international artists. Most of the local artists were acquaintances of the producer while the foreign artists, like LALA, Marc Systematic and C-Beg, contacted the producer via email. They expressed their desire to work with the label. How they got his contact information, Justin has no clue.

As a proud owner of Deeper Manila, the first and only Philippine-based house music label. He said, "we are a new market in the scene and people around the world will be curious about us. We all have our different influences but we have something that the others do not have. It's our being Filipinos. There's definitely something Pinoy about our music. So, you have to watch out for our releases to know how that actually sounds. Soon, house music in the Philippines will grow and we will be recognized globally."