Seven years after Limasawa Street helped turn Ben&Ben into one of the defining acts of modern Filipino folk-pop, the band is giving its debut album a physical life.
The nine-piece has released the 2019 record on vinyl and CD, with Grammy Award-winning sound engineer Jett Galindo handling the remaster for both formats.
It is a fitting second life for an album whose songs have long outgrown their original release. Limasawa Street gave listeners “Pagtingin” and “Araw-Araw,” earned multi-platinum certification from the Philippine Association of the Record Industry, and took Album of the Year at the 33rd Awit Awards. Its success also sent Ben&Ben on a multi-city tour across the Philippines and Singapore.
For Ben&Ben, however, revisiting the album is less about its accolades than the version of the band captured inside it.
“We still hear us; we still hear the beginnings of our current sound—and we are very grateful to those versions of ourselves who dared to dream and build a world of their own,” the group said.
That sense of preservation makes vinyl an especially appropriate home for the record. The members themselves are fans of physical media, describing finally having their own vinyl pressing as “surreal.”
For longtime listeners, Limasawa Street now exists as more than a playlist or a memory from a Ben&Ben show. It is an artifact from the moment the band’s sound — and ambitions — began taking full shape.
Pre-orders for the vinyl and CD editions opened through Backspacer Records on August 29.