Jun Regalado and Thandii Blend Manila Sound and UK Alt-Soul on Coco Okayo

Jun Regalado has played drums on something like 400 records. VST & Co., Celeste Legaspi, Pilita Corrales, the entire scaffolding of 1970s and 80s Original Pilipino Music passed through his hands at one session or another, across nearly six decades of studio work in Manila. He's in his late 70s now, a fixture of the Philippines' electronic and OPM underground for as long as most of that scene has existed. On January 12 this year, two British musicians he'd never met flew into his home studio to make a record with him. That record, Coco Okayo, came out September 11 on Sama Sama Records. It's the second release from a label that's barely six months old, and it's a genuinely strange, genuinely good idea: take the man widely called the Philippines' most recorded drummer and put him in a room with Thandii, a Margate art-pop duo whose companion albums Dream With You and Come As You were named Rough Trade's Album of the Month in 2024.

A Trip Called MAR-NILA

Thandii is Jess Berry and Graham Godfrey, and Godfrey is Filipino by heritage, which is the whole reason this happened. The pair pitched their Manila trip as "MAR-NILA," their own shorthand for grafting Margate's beat-driven art-pop onto 1970s Manila Sound. Sama Sama's founder, the DJ and researcher Norsicaa (Alice Whittington), brokered the introduction and produced the sessions. What came out of what Thandii themselves called a chaotic whirlwind of a trip is seven tracks, 37 minutes, that genuinely don't sound like either party's back catalogue on their own.

What It Actually Sounds Like

The title track opens the record on ethereal vocals, twinkling piano and a rolling disco-funk bassline; Thandii have described it as being about dancing as a form of self-soothing when everything else feels uncertain, which tracks for a song built around a 78-year-old session legend's pocket. "Run Run" brings in Filipino vocalist Ian Santillano, and "My Angel" leans further into the trip-hop haze that's been Thandii's signature since their 2023 debut. Underneath it all: guitars, saxophone, congas, kulintang, saronay, the same hand percussion that made Manila Sound swing fifty years ago, not sampled, but played, mostly by Regalado himself.

A Label Built for Reissues, Now Making New Records

Sama Sama Records launched in June with a remaster of Boy Katindig's 1980 Filipino-Brazilian jazz-fusion record After Midnight, a rescue job we covered when it landed. Coco Okayo is the label's pivot from archaeology to actual new music, and it's a smarter move than it looks: Regalado's own 1977 track "Pinoy Funk" had already found a second life through Soundway's Ayo Ke Disco compilation, so Sama Sama isn't discovering him so much as giving him a fresh credit at an age when most drummers have long since put the sticks down. Norsicaa has said the label is "being built for the region and diaspora; the culture belongs to them, but everyone is welcome to appreciate it," which is a nicer way of explaining a UK label's Manila session than most. Coco Okayo won't read as house or techno to anyone browsing this site's usual beat, and it isn't trying to. But a drummer who anchored half of Manila's session scene for two generations getting his name on a new record, on vinyl, with international distribution, at this point in his career, is exactly the kind of story that a wider Southeast Asian music beat should be telling. It's out now digitally and on 12-inch through Sama Sama Records, with Bandcamp carrying the full release. Cover art: Coco Okayo album artwork, courtesy Sama Sama Records.