There might have been riots going on today in London (well police and media
manufactured ones :=)) but enuf people made it out to Shepherds Bush Empire
for this show. Just wanted to give a quick review to the list b4 I forget
cause it was wicked night out in london regardless of the day time
scenarios.
Mike Ladd, he of the Infesticons had a live band with him - dj, wah wah
Hendrix style guitar player, drummer, and Mike has a set up with a scratch
box & some knobs. This guys a mad poet. He comes from a planet that only he
understands, even tho its called New York. Saw him a few other times,
mainly @ Big Dada night @ Xen Festival where he crowd surfed with the mike
in one hand and a bottle of jack in the other...He might have been the
opener 2 nite but he rocked the crowd specially when the crew got hooked up
to play & his opener was "We're the Anti Pop Consortium Tribute Band". An
acknowledgment to fellow noise manipulators & beat poets who I'd just seen
a month ago.
The tracks reeked with beats, Mikes poetry and rapping - backed up by
Hendrix fuzzed up sauce, specially as he described the lovely police
uniforms he experienced on Oxford Street earlier in the day... The music
rocked between hard beats and electric fuzz guitar and in a particular track
Mike gave it some pure guns n roses vocals.. When he ripped out a pair of
glasses, someone in the crowd shouted Tony Blair (the uk prime minister put
on glasses for the first time in public yesterday admitting he was coming
out) & Mike went into a diatribe about politics and Bush and
1999....Although I was up with the Majesticons in the Balcony, he rocked the
house with The Infesticons as the finale.. Later ran into him in the
upstairs bar, bottle of jack in hand & met Fred the dj who was happy to sell
me their Welcome to The Future CD on ozonemusic.com.. Yeah cool..abstract
smoking hard beats rocked.
Stage cleared and suddenly Tom/Squarepusher came out and stood behind this
big black box, that mainly hid him xcept for his shadow on the screen behind
him. Strobing lights hit and it sounded like the electronic orchestra
warmup. That spit & started. And got into a dnb groove 4 half a minute &
then schreeched into electronica hell zone. I tried to see what he was
manipulating behind thebox... Seemed like he was having some sound trouble.
Went into some inneresting hard drum n bass riffs, but the whole scenario of
electronic whatever stabs washed across the crowd left standing dumbfounded.
They were either soooo into it or sooo out of it. No one moved.
Most interesting bit was when he came running cross the front of the stage
to check the monitors and then opened up the back of the black box to switch
some wires. I had to ask someone if this actuallly WAS Squarepusher as it
didnt sound anything like the outthere dope shit I'd heard a few years
ago...This must have been a totally different set than what I read about the
other day in San Franflipsco... So let the flames begin, but imho this was
erh not the Squarepusher performance I expected. Checked with some Warp
flyer dudes on the way out who said, yeah, well it's a Tortoise crowd, so he
just totally went for making them crazy. OK, Tortoise. Two vibes on stage,
two drummers, two guitar players, keyboards, oh yes. Jazzy, beat laden with
guitars. Moody, jazzy, lovers electronica. And nice visuals behind them
melting into each other... Give me that vibe player... If the album is
anything like their live performance, worth having just for the jazual beat
driven moody as I wanna be ambience. Sweet stuff to tool into Wonderland.
I lapped up every angst driven guitar riff spliced with vibes &
keyboards...This was delicious.
Highlight of the night - meeting someone on the balcony who agreed with me
about Squarepusher and wanted to know who Mike Ladd was & was that
Infesticons track at the end released....And gettin past a smoke without
gettin caught (no smoking venue xcept 4 the bar) & then running into Mike
Ladd & his dj who were casually carousing. ?The last words of the night
from the guy in Tortoise was "Fuck the Majesticons, Long live the
Infesticons"...and then I left, but I heard them start up again for
encore....
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