A New Jersey Producer Is Turning Tikbalang Myths Into Jersey Club Records
On Book of Spells, New Jersey producer WILHELMINA folds tikbalang mythology, Bisaya vocals and a Filipino illustrator's occult artwork into jersey club and techno, then goes further on a new pan-Southeast Asian club compilation.
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Five golden tikbalang, the horse-headed tricksters of Philippine folklore, stand shoulder to shoulder on a checkered floor lit by candles. Pasted into one corner of the same frame is a satellite image of a typhoon bearing down on the Philippines, grid lines and all, the kind of chart a weather bureau puts out during storm season. That collage is the cover of Book of Spells, and it tells you more about the record underneath than any press line would.
Book of Spells is a five-track EP by WILHELMINA, a Filipino-American producer and DJ based in New Jersey, released quietly on Bandcamp and SoundCloud back on February 26 and only now picking up real attention. It opens with "Divine Hand," all booming 808s and a chopped Kelis sample dragged into a jersey club stomp, and closes with "Kinulam Ng Sayaw," a title that translates roughly to "bewitched by the dance," sung in Bisaya over a swung, percussive close. In between sit "Forbidden Movement," "Booty Hypnosis" and "Introspection," each one leaning harder into what the artist calls, in the release notes, "the hypnotism of techno" and "my Filipino heritage."
The Art Does the Talking
The cover was illustrated by Kosmos.Khaos, credited under the name Orbit, a visual artist working out of Kidapawan City in Mindanao. It draws deliberately on Philippine occult tradition, folk cosmology and old scientific illustration, down to the gold tikbalang meant to signal protection, spiritual power and status. It is the rare EP cover that a listener could describe accurately without having heard a single track, which is exactly the point: the Filipino reviewers at The Flying Lugaw heard the same babaylan-possession energy in the music itself, calling the record's best moments "spellbound," while noting a couple of tracks ride their loops longer than they need to.
This Isn't His First Trip Through the Region
Book of Spells is the tighter, more mystical half of a project WILHELMINA has been building for a couple of years. His 2024 album SALAHILO did the same fusion at a wider angle, working budots and kulintang from the Philippines, Thaibeat from Thailand and Indobounce from Indonesia into a jersey-club-and-gqom base built for a dancefloor, not a museum. Crucially, the credits list named cultural consultants from House of Gongs, including Jenny Bawer-Young, Sata Egal Abdullah, Farid Guinomla, Joel Ganlal, Datu Waway Saway and Balugto, the kind of acknowledgment that a lot of diaspora club records skip entirely when they reach for a gong sample.
The Timing Isn't an Accident
What makes this worth writing about now, rather than in February, is what has happened since. In July, WILHELMINA and fellow producer PHANTAZN put out BKTV ALL-STARS COMP 001 under their New York platform Bootleg KTV, a 21-track, 26-artist compilation of East and Southeast Asian club music, budots and Indobounce sitting next to Taiwanese taike and Japanese J-core, that Resident Advisor wrote up on July 10 as queer diaspora electronica with a distinct regional accent. Two and a half weeks later, Mixmag Asia's essential-listening roundup for the year named Book of Spells alongside it. None of that is coincidence so much as one artist's back catalogue finally getting looked at properly at the same time.
It's worth saying plainly: WILHELMINA doesn't live in the Philippines, Thailand or Indonesia, and this isn't a scene report from Manila or Bangkok. But budots is having a moment on two fronts simultaneously right now. On the ground in Davao City, a trio calling themselves the Budots Three just landed an Eastern Margins deal off the back of the genre's own regional momentum. Three thousand kilometres away in New Jersey, a producer who grew up with the same rhythms is getting an audience for them inside jersey club, gqom and techno sets that would otherwise never hear the word "budots" at all. Whether that counts as representation or just good timing probably depends on which side of the Pacific you're standing on. Either way, the tikbalang on that cover earned its spot.
Cover art: "Book of Spells" by WILHELMINA, illustration by Kosmos.Khaos (Orbit), via Bandcamp.
