Michael Palin Called Budots 'Bewilderingly Incomprehensible' and Said He Loved It Anyway

Sir Michael Palin called budots "bewilderingly incomprehensible." He's a fan anyway. "I have to battle against this image of being terribly nice," he said, "and that's why I like budots, because it's so utterly different from the church music I was brought up on."

Palin heard it in the studio of Sherwin Tuna, who performs as DJ Love and is credited with originating budots in his native Davao City. He met him in the final episode of Michael Palin in the Philippines, a three-part Channel 5 series from ITN Productions whose closing chapter aired on 12 October.

"I Loved His Lair"

Palin visited DJ Love's recording space and called it his "lair." "He creates this very sharp, jarring electronic sort of music," he said of what he heard there. Producer Neil Ferguson went further: "Oh, it makes punk look like Beethoven."

"What I liked about the budots thing was that he used sounds from the street," Palin said. "Police cars going by, dogs barking, a police siren. All these were sampled and could be used in his tracks." Palin shared a video of the exchange on Instagram on 14 October.

Street Sound, 140 BPM

Budots started a long way from British primetime. Tuna created budots in the back of an internet cafe in Davao City in 2009. The result is thick bass under playful, sampled collages of jeepney horns, animal noises and cheesy synths. Loopliner's guide to the Philippines' electronic scene traces how budots went from the streets of Davao to viral fame on Boiler Room.

DJ Love's debut album, Budots World (Reloaded), released via Eastern Margins on 7 August 2024, folds in bounce, techno, trap and the harder-edged budots mutation bomb-tek. Sounds pulled from the local environment of Davao, jeepney horns especially, carry the tracks instead. "This album is my love letter to the Filipino people and to all local budots producers," DJ Love said of the record.

From Boiler Room to British Primetime

Palin's documentary puts DJ Love in front of a different audience again. The presenter has already taken Channel 5 crews to Venezuela, Nigeria, Iraq and North Korea. The Philippines leg alone took him from Manila to the militarised island of Pagasa in the South China Sea, where he found himself amid a conflict between a Philippine and a Chinese coastguard ship, then on to beach camps in El Nido, a swim with sardines in Moalboal, and, under military escort, the ruins of Marawi on Mindanao; on the island of Jolo, he met a member of the Abu Sayyaf militant group. A companion book, also titled Michael Palin in the Philippines, was published on 1 October 2026 by Hutchinson Heinemann.

DJ Love made his Boiler Room debut in 2023, then played his first UK show in September 2024 at EartH in Hackney, as part of Eastern Margins' Margins United festival.