Cebu's Clubs Were Karaoke Bars and Budots. Cradio Radio Rented an Art Gallery Instead.

Three years ago, Mikelis Yu had roughly four days to plan a party. He rented an art gallery in Cebu's Crossroads lifestyle district, built the whole thing around a Grand Theft Auto theme, and watched more than 150 people show up for something that didn't have a name yet, according to the Philippine Daily Inquirer. That party became Cradio Radio, and the habit of treating a venue like a blank canvas never left. "I could play around with art, marketing, and music," Yu, who DJs as Moni-Moni, told the Inquirer. "My blank canvas was that venue, that space."

Yu was born in the Philippines, raised in California, and came home to Cebu to help run his family's hotel and resort business. Cradio Radio started as a way to document his own house parties on a private Instagram account, according to SunStar Cebu. It didn't stay private for long.

What Cebu's Nightlife Was Missing

Cebu's scene, as Cradio co-founder Dean Pasque describes it, splits mostly between resto-bars, karaoke joints and "tugs-tugs-tugs" clubs, plus the budots wave that rolled up from Davao. Pasque moved to Cebu in 2010 with a vinyl collection and years of record-store habits, and he wanted something closer to the club culture he'd found abroad: rooms where people paid to get in and came for the DJs, not the bottle service.

"We sell an entrance, keep the drinks cheap, and people come for the music, for the DJs," Pasque told the Inquirer. Cradio skips VIP tables entirely and pushes a phones-away, be-present rule on the floor.

The sound backs that up. Yu and his co-DJs, Michael Sharpe and Sophia Alo (who plays as Salo-Salo), build sets on a foundation of disco, acid and house, then wander into Brazilian funk, Somali disco and Japanese reggae without much warning. "You have a moral obligation to keep people dancing, but bring new music to the table," Sharpe says. Yu's own crate-digging, according to Mixmag Asia, runs through acid, trance, funk, soul and rare groove, with a habit of pairing obscure Filipino records against contemporary club tracks.

Twelve People, Not Four

It's easy to mistake Cradio for a one-man project, since Yu is the face on most of the flyers. It isn't. Sharpe works in food distribution by day; Alo, who came back from London, teaches Pilates and speech therapy; Pasque's family designs and manufactures La Galuche, a Philippine luxury shagreen furniture maker. Behind the four DJs sit eight more people, family and friends, handling photography, video and production, according to the Inquirer. "Cradio is not just DJs," Sharpe says.

Cebu to Sydney

The reach has outgrown the city fast. Cradio has taken parties to Siargao and flown to Manila for one-off nights, building working ties with Manila's UNKNWN, Siargao's Barbosa Records and Davao's We Can't Relate. Its network now stretches to shows in Japan, an appearance on Potato Head Bali's Headstream Radio and a feature on Gilles Peterson's Worldwide FM, according to Mixmag Asia.

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This year, Cradio marked three years with a "Diskoral" anniversary party that pulled in DJs from across the Philippines, and Mixmag Asia named Yu one of the artists exciting it this September. The calendar keeps filling: Yu plays Ace Hotel Sydney on October 2, Cradio's annual Halloween gathering is next, and a January event tied to Cebu's Sinulog Festival is already being planned, according to Mixmag Asia.

None of it looks like the resto-bar and karaoke circuit Pasque described. It looks like what Cebu's underground didn't have a platform for, until four people decided to build one anyway. Cebu already has its own recent breakout in GUDFELLA, who plays EDC Thailand in December; readers looking for where else to hear house and techno in the city can check our Cebu and Boracay nightlife guide.

Cover photo: courtesy of Cradio Radio, via SunStar Cebu.