Invincible Youth

Manila Magic would very much like it if you didn’t underestimate their talent because of their youth.

- Chryssa Celestino

WHEN YOU were trying to understand Daria’s comebacks or flipping through Marvel comic books in your room where your Nirvana poster hung, Zild Benitez was in a storytelling competition, explaining to his fellow grade-schoolers how a mythical bird once pooped on a prince and turned him to stone. He would narrate, in rehearsed singsong, the epic of Ibong Adarna for a competition. He’d place runner-up but preferred spending afternoons in the arcade playing “Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune,” where he and his friends obsessed over driving virtual vehicles and overtaking each other.

Somewhere in the South, Tim Marquez was training to be a top jock. At eight, he played with the Army Football Club, gearing up for a lifetime career. But on days he wasn’t scoring goals, he’d hang out with his two older brothers, probably swimming or taking dance lessons. When those got old, he’d retire to his room to play “Age of Empires”: or kill Orcs in “Lord of the Rings.” He gained weight—his downfall as an athlete, he thought—and had to rethink his next move.

Years later, on Oct. 2, 2016, the song In the Night dropped on YouTube. Obscured in silhouettes, two guys slowly swaying to synths sing—in warped voices—about falling in love at 18 as they mime the desperation that goes with it. All ears are on this ’80s-inspired, nostalgic showcase as the artists, in a rare occasion, coolly sidestep. The song is an elaborate introduction of to Tim and Zild of Manila Magic−once the teenaged dorks, now the indie scene’s newest electronic duo that haven’t even hit their 20s.