Digging my Grave
So what do you do to a song with lyrics that unfold like a confessional dirge? You gotta echo the tension that reverberates through the lines of longing and resignation.
A few weeks ago, a band based in Australia reached out to me to co-produce a song that crawls with spiritual disorientation. The invocation of reverence and indifference suggests the wayward path of silent apathy and loss. But this exact feeling is what has driven me to fill up that void and make up for the absence of faith.
“Digging My Grave” is an emotional landscape that captures the tragic arc of aspiration turned despair. A fall from grace without the sight of deliverance. And believe me, I know. JPH, the songwriter and vocalist for the band from down under—JPH X The Dangerous Animals—has seen battles that I’ve taken vision in my own eyes. I know what this song is all about. It’s the confluence of experiences from pushing it here in Metro Manila and brute-forcing it through in Australia. And I’m not talking about the music alone.
There’s the jarring calmness of doing the daily grind, a moment of clarity amid the chaos. The artist’s life is not easy, that I know for sure. And this song illustrates it better than it can ever be sung. The spiritual yearning and psychological torment, reminiscent of Chris Cornell and Trent Reznor, capture it perfectly. But it’s not just homage—it’s lived experience. The lyrics don’t posture; they unravel.
I’m entrusted with the final breath of a song— its voice stripped to guitar and confession, captured in crystalline stillness at Wundenberg’s Recording Studios in Australia. But its pulse began elsewhere, from the far outskirts of the Greater Manila Area to Adelaide in the land down under. Back in Manila’s humid air, tempest, and ravaging floodwaters, a quiet fury pushes through. This track is a bridge— between cities, between selves, between the grind and the grace we never asked for.
It’s not just post-production. It’s a ritual. A sonic reckoning for the ache that language can’t hold. I’m here to witness and thread its grief into orchestral swells that hover between collapse and hope. Having known the back story altogether has given me an insight into the haunting universality of this piece. The backup of a choral arrangement, together with a chamber orchestra, lifts you up, then takes it home at the same time. Knowing the place of this piece and the familiarity of the story fuels the inspiration.
But what makes this track resonate beyond its sonic choices is its emotional architecture. The repetition of “I reach for the sky / I fell to the earth” isn’t just poetic—it’s ritualistic. It’s the kind of line that feels like it’s been lived a hundred times before it was ever written. And when “my words are impaired” hits, it’s not just about speech—it’s about the failure of language to carry grief, the way silence sometimes screams louder than sound.
In the mix, I leaned into that tension. The choral layers aren’t angelic—they fracture, like echoes of reverence trying to find their way back. The orchestral swells don’t resolve—they hover, suspended between hope and collapse. It’s not a song that wants to be saved. It wants to be witnessed.
And maybe that’s the point. “Digging My Grave” doesn’t offer redemption—it offers recognition. Of the grind, the ache, the quiet victories, and the louder defeats. It’s a song for those who’ve reached for the sky and found themselves staring at the dirt. And in that, it becomes something sacred.
Credits:
Vocals: JPH
Rhythm Guitar: JPH
Orchestral Arrangement & Elements: Allen Alesna
Written by JPH (Juan Hermano)
Production:
Recording Engineer: Lewis Wundenberg
Post Production and Mix Engineer:
Allen Alesna
Produced by: Juan Hermano and Allen Alesna, and some ideas from Ian Alesna
Recorded at Wundenberg’s Recording Studios, Adelaide, Australia
Additional Recording, Mixed and Mastered at BOA STUDIOS
All Rights Reserved © 2025
Photo by: BreiZ Photography
lifted from JPHXDA Facebook
Full track, streaming soon on all platforms.
You can preview the whole track below.