Saint Guel Launches Manila Sound Records With a Debut EP Featuring Junoy Manalo

MSR-001 is the catalog number stamped into a brand new 12-inch, the first release on a label that, until this EP, didn't have a catalogue at all. Saint Guel, the Manila producer born Miguel Santiago, is now a label owner. The record is On The Way EP, six mixes of vocal house pressed across two sides, released under his own new imprint, Manila Sound Records.

Jason Dhakal, a Filipino R&B and soul singer with a following well outside the club circuit, sings the Main Mix, and Manila deep house producer Junoy Manalo co-produced that same mix before reworking the record's closing track into his own Vibe Mix. Manalo released his own debut album, Inner Child, independently earlier this year, with no label behind it at all. On this record, he's working inside someone else's.

A Producer Who Spent Years on Other People's Labels

Saint Guel started DJing as a teenager and began producing soon after, working his way through Manila's house and disco circuit years before any release carried his own label name. Most of his catalogue has gone out through other people's imprints. Hong Kong's FuFu Records put out his Closer EP in December 2022, his third release with the label after contributing to two volumes of its 88: Double Happiness compilation series. FuFu Records has said it first found his music through his production work for Bangkok's More Rice Records, a connection that put a Manila producer inside a Thai label's catalogue years before Manila Sound Records existed.

That history makes On The Way EP less a debut than an overdue formality: a producer with releases on a Hong Kong label and production credits in Bangkok, finally pressing a record with his own name on the spine.

Six Mixes, Two Sides, One New Imprint

On The Way EP runs six versions across its A and B sides: a Main Mix built around Dhakal's vocal, a Club Mix, a stripped-down Chord-a-Pella edit, a Dub Mix, a Pure Wet cut featuring Omoloko, and Junoy Manalo's Vibe Mix closing things out. Manila Sound Records describes it as a modern take on classic house from the Philippines, and the tracklist backs that up: full vocal mixes built for a DJ set sitting alongside the kind of stripped tools and dub versions that only make sense once you're used to running your own label's pressing schedule rather than someone else's.

The vinyl, pressed as a 12-inch under catalog number MSR-001, is already showing up at overseas record shops: Barcelona's Dancing Vinyl lists it shipping from November 11, priced at €18.90, under House, Tech and Deep.

A Label With His Name Over the Door

Saint Guel isn't the first Manila producer to start a label once the production credits piled up elsewhere, but it's still a narrow club, and most of the names in it (Junoy Manalo among them) have gone the opposite way, releasing with no label at all rather than building one. Manila Sound Records splits the difference: a structure, a catalog number, a pressing plant, but still just one artist's name attached to it so far.

Whether it stays a vehicle for Saint Guel's own records or starts signing other Manila producers is an open question that only a second release will answer. For now, the catalogue is one record deep: six mixes, two sides, MSR-001. The vinyl ships from Dancing Vinyl on November 11, 2026.

Cover photo: On The Way EP official artwork, courtesy of Manila Sound Records.