Two things we want to see at Head in the Clouds Manila & Two acts who rocked the stage at Head in the Clouds LA 2022!

If there’s one thing we at Beat This love more than representing Filipino music, it’s representing Asian music as a whole! Nothing beats seeing ANY asian act make an impact whether they hail from Indonesia, Thailand, South Korea, Taiwan or Singapore. We are all in the same fight - to bridge the gap between western worlds and prove we have what it takes to compete on a global scale!

Well, thanks to the widely famous collective/record label 88Rising, we as Asians, now have a platform to make some serious noise.

88Rising founded their festival Head In The Clouds in 2018, and towards the end of last month (August 20th - August 21st), held their 4th installment at the Brookside at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, CA.

This year is a special year for Head In The Clouds as they extend their efforts to the Asian region later this year in December, hosting a festival in both Jakarta, Indonesia and of course…. Manila, Philippines!

There’s still not much information readily available for Head In The Clouds Manila, except that it’s being held on the 9th & 10th of December, and tickets are now available here - but we can take a pretty good guess at some things we might be in store for:

• Paradise Rising, which is a sub-label of 88Rising has released 2 awesome EP’s, semilucent 1 & 2, over the last few years, showcasing the best up and coming Filipino talent. We wouldn’t be surprised if we saw some (or even most) of those acts hit the Head In The Clouds Manila stage, particularly Ylona Garcia who recently signed to 88Rising and opened Head In The Clouds LA… more about her set later…

• Head In The Clouds LA 2022 had a pretty intense focus on food, and Filipino’s LOVE food, no we actually LOVE IT. We wouldn’t be surprised if we saw some Filipino food stores pop up throughout the festival to keep patrons full and happy while they experience some awesome music!

I guess we will have to wait and see, but let’s jump into what went down at Head In The Clouds LA and shine light on two talented acts who rocked the stage!

YLONA GARCIA

Ylona is an Australian-Filipina who we’ve featured on our weekly show The Chosen Dozen before. In 2015 she was inducted into the Pinoy Big Brother house and was announced as the first runner up. From there she took on a series of musical projects before becoming a solo act, eventually signing to 88Rising and Paradise Rising in 2021. She left fans complete when she hit the Head In The Clouds LA Festival last month, which you can check out and of course we hope to see her this December in Manila - SANAAA!

Jackson Wang

Born in Hong Kong, Jackson Wang was a super talented child growing up, being exceptionally gifted in the sport of fencing (following from his father) and being a natural in composing music. It wasn’t until he passed an audition by South Korean talent scouter JYP Entertainment that he chose to go in the direction of music. 

That was at the age of 16, and since then he has risen to be one of the biggest names in K-Pop, which was no doubt on display when he hit the stage at Head In The Clouds LA 2022. Peep the video below of him performing ‘Mind Games’ alongside fellow Head In The Clouds performer MILLI!