Ray Lind wrote:
quoted 7 lines visuals were very cool. Went well with the music,> visuals were very cool. Went well with the music,
> which was incredible.Well it was Plaid, on a good
> sound system. I havent heard a good part of what they
> were playing, and I am pretty familiar with all thier
> recordings, at least the albums. It was all remixed
> differentley as well, other than a few tracks bieng
> played straight. Also I usually dont bitch about this
i suppose i'll chime in a small dissenting opinion, which i'll preface by
saying that 1) plaid was my first "idm show" (ie. non-dj set), 2) i
enjoyed it, both the music and visuals, and 3) plaid are one of my
favorite electronic artists. HOWEVER, i don't understand how anyone can
say that this was an "excellent show." first of all, the energy sucked.
there were about 6 people dancing, total, and a whole bunch of
chin-scratching idmer-than-thou fuckers standing around with straight
faces and not so much as a toe tapping! wtf? second, the performance
itself was not all that exciting. the amount of sound manipulation
actually being performed was minimal - as far as i can tell they were
playing their song files in whatever their mac software of choice is
(max/msp i presume?) and tweaking a few parameters here and there. maybe
i'm expecting too much, but it seemed to me that the format they adopted
left absolutely no room for improvisation or variation of any but the
slightest kind. in other words, it all seemed very rigid to me. a song
would start, various parts would come in and out, and the song would end,
all completely independent of what ed and andy were doing. i'm sorry but
that's just not all that interesting from a performance perspective.
i know this is a bigtime rehash of previous threads, but i figured there
should be at least one alternative view posted to the list. again, i'm not
saying i didn't enjoy it, but i am glad i only spent $10 for the ticket. i
wish plaid the best, of course, but i'm wondering how long it will remain
acceptable to "perform" without doing much of anything. i totally don't
buy the "it's about the music" argument - you shouldn't be going on tour
if that's your performance philosophy.
other mentionables: the show was short. plaid played for, what, an hour?
also, i don't know how they usually act, but the boys didn't look like
they were having much fun up there. when they left the stage it was a
little wave and that was it - i'm guessing they were as unimpressed with
the audience as i was, but who knows. the visuals were generally very
cool, especially the stuff with the start-stop minicams. i missed all but
the last 10 min of mira calix, which was basically a 10 min autechre
track. i'm not sure exactly what she was doing behind the decks, but i
hope i missed the exciting part. and finally, the encore of squance with
the pacman-eating-80's-iconoclasts imagery was hilarious. i'm assuming
that was some manner of made-for-mtv footage?
btw, could someone who is familiar with such things give a list of the
gear plaid were using? there were the two G4s, of course, a huge array of
knobs in between them (what was that thing?), at least one touchpad midi
controller of some kind, and some other stuff behind them that was
obscured from my viewpoint.
quoted 8 lines shit, but Jesus christ all you cool people> shit, but Jesus christ all you cool people
> chainsmoking, give it a rest for a few! Fuck I know
> you have nervous energy and dont know what to do with
> your hands other than smoke cigarrette after
> cigarrete,I smoked for ten years and I usually dont
> mind second hand smoke that much but that place was
> disgusting to breath the air in last night. Even my
> smoker friends were complaining.
it wasn't me! i only had one cigarette! my girlfriend started to feel very
ill toward the end due to a combination of heat + smoke, and left a bit
early to get some air/sleep in the car. the smoke didn't really bother me
though - they've all but completely banned smoking in boulder, so i
appreciate a good smokey club every now and then. not that i want to start
a thread about it!
-nub
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