I just wanted to relate some brief (you can start laughing now)
impressions of my experience at the Orbital / Underworld show in San
Francisco last night, with maybe a brief jog into discussing last
Friday's Chemical Brothers show.
I had a great time. I mean, a _really_ great time. I haven't danced this
hard since last October's great Friends and Family party. I was a fish on
a line all night long (aka: hooked), and was only briefly able to stop
dancing. Everything about the show kept me moving, from the tight (if
overly treble-heavy) sound, the great lighting and video, and the
MUSIC. My goodness, the music.
So, specifics. I got to the show at around 9:00. Either Jonah Sharpe
didn't play live or he was the gent with the short-cropped hair dropping
the hard funked Detroit jams. I have to give that guy props. He may
always be riding the current trend (and make no mistake - the Detroit
sound is _very_ trendy amongst the SF techno elite right now. Big ups to
Jon Santos and Joe Rice for being two of the biggest perpetrators behind
this fashion conspiracy), but he does it with style and (dare I say it)
panache. I approved.
The DJ that followed him, though, completely knocked my shit right
out. From step one he started dropping the cold, dark techno jams that
give me body rushes and make me jerk spasmodically. Cool, precise mixes
of tons of material on Reload records (the choice of discerning darkcore
beat junkies everywhere), and a few notable surprises (of which I will
write more anon). He was exceptional (in my incredibly arrogant opinion
-- I imagine that many of my compatriots at the show were less than
thrilled. TOO BAD. I was happier than a pig in slop ;). I didn't know
they let DJs like that play in SF. Does anybody have any clue who he was?
Somewhere along there the DJ winked out and Orbital clambered up to take
the stage. As has been mentioned, one of the two Ps was wearing a laser
pointer strapped to his flashlight glasses. He did funny things with it
all night, but really, who gives a shit?
Orbital were all about THE MUSIC. The lights were great, the video was
just as good as I was led to expect, but oh dear, I got my ass rocked by
the sounds pounding their way away from the speakers. I mean, they
_started_ with my current favorite Orbital song ("Out There Somewhere")
and proceeded to methodically work their way through the high points of
their already very high-point-laden catalog. The reworks of "Choice" and
"Satan" were particularly tasty, although I thought my ears were going to
jump off and make a run for the hills during the more trebly bits of
"Satan". Ouch. And, of course, they played "Halcyon" with the magic
little Belinda Carlisle bit, which probably would have affected me more
profoundly had I not already been expecting it. They finished with a
encore consisting of "Planet of the Shapes" and one of the songs off of
_Snivilization_ that I never bothered to learn the name of (me? dislike
_Snivilization_? Whatever made you think that?). I think that otherwise
their set was probably note-for-note the same as the set they did in LA.
I personally could have handled a tiny bit more reworking of Orbital's
material. I could hear what they were up to sometimes, but I think a lot
of the subtler knob-twiddling got lost, and it was sort of odd knowing
exactly where all of the breaks were going to occur. It was life-
affirming hearing the artists that made me decide that I wanted to be a
DJ play their music REAL LOUD through a big sound system, but I thought
one of the positive things about techno was that it encouraged
experimentation, right?
One thing that their video made much more explicit was that Orbital is
unusually political for techno artists. The video made explicit many
points about consumer culture, the power of symbols in our culture, and
our overweening blindness in the face of rampant environmental
destruction. I don't think I'm just pulling that out of my butt,
either. Some of it would have been difficult to misinterpret (like all of
the shots of guys with chainsaws cutting down trees, f'rinstance).
In any case, Orbital were exactly as stunning as I expected them to be,
and I could have gotten down on my knees and wept at the beauty of it
all, but I was too busy dancing and whooping and generally making an ass
of myself to be bothered with such maudlin sentiment (those of you who
were there -- I was the tall geeklike person with the pony-tail, packer
boots, and the bright cheery Public Image Limited T shirt who kept
screaming and had the amateur obstacle course set up next to his feet).
After Orbital left the stage, That DJ started up again, spinning more
incredible hard traxxy mean-spirited techno stuff, including (drum roll
please) the Prodigy remix of Front 242's "Religion". Keep the crossover
indeed. Both I and the recently-transplanted Midwesterner I was with were
well pleased and grinning like idiots at the surprisingly good music.
Don't get me wrong -- there are a lot of really good technohead DJs in
San Francisco, but I prefer a harder / more abstract sound than what most
people here spin, and it was good to hear some of my favorite tunes spun
loud.
After an interminable break while the road crew tore down Orbital's
incredibly huge stage setup and set up Underworld's marginally less
complex array of gear, Messrs Smith, Hyde, and Emerson took to the stage,
looking cheery and happy to be there. At this point, I was standing up on
the balcony, so was able to see what they were doing on stage, which was
basically live mixing of presequenced material. Don't forget that Darren
Emerson is a DJ first and foremost. I kinda wondered why they bothered
doing it that way, considering that it would have been just as easy to
sequence everything, but as they warmed to what they were doing they got
more fluid with the mixing and it all made sense.
They had a buttload of gear up on stage which I could be a faithful
little trainspotter for y'all and detail, but I won't. Suffice it to say
that they had the usual array of trendy techno gear, and my partner in
crime for the evening spent a good chunk of time torturing himself,
trying to decide if the little Roland box mounted vertically in one of
their rackmount cases was a 303 or a 606. He finally decided that it was
a 606 when he saw Karl Hyde tweaking the cymbals on it late in the
show. I'd much earlier decided that it really wasn't worth worrying
about. I will say for thems that's curious that they were making very
prominent (and obnoxious) use of a Nord Lead throughout the evening, and
made me decide that I need one of those, monophonic or not. They
certainly do make some jaggedly analogesque noises. I'll also say that it
was cool that the only use that I saw for the guitar that Mr. Hyde was
hauling around stage with him was to act as the frequency input for the
vocoder on his voice. I thought that was a neato change of pace.
They played a very long set of very dancy material, which suited me just
fine, because I was, in fact, there to dance. I personally thought that
the vocals were a perfect counterpoint for the music, but I think that we
established long ago that there are those that like Underworld's vocals
and those that find them superfluous and annoying. I'm one of the former.
High points for me included a great, extended version of "Pearls Girl"
and a nicely-done encore of "Cowgirl" and "Rez" played back to
back. Hearing "Rez" was a very intensely nostalgic moment for me. If
Underworld deserves to be remembered for only one thing, it's definitely
that song.
What struck me most about Underworld was the enthusiasm they brought to
their set. While Orbital were content to bob their heads energetically
and occasionally confer with each other, Underworld were positively goofy
with energy. All three of them were bobbling enthusiastically around the
stage, with Karl and Darren pausing periodically to hype up the crowd.
When Karl wasn't singing, he was running around the stage like Moby or
something. It was fun to watch. And, of course, getting to see the Tomato
video was cool, although it was pretty obvious that the videos were
intended to be set to different songs than the ones that were currently
playing (a disadvantage when a) your song has words and b) those words
are integrated pretty heavily into the video).
What was remarkable to me was that in the past two years I've gone from
being a die-hard anti-fan of Underworld's to thinking that they are
positively the bees' knees. The vocals used to _really_ get on my nerves
and the music didn't do much for me, but once again, as they finished off
Rez I was just about fit to cry (and just about to fall over, too -- I
haven't danced that hard in a LOOONG time).
I hadn't really thought about what an important show this was to me until
I was there last night, but both of these bands have played pivotal roles
in my musical development. If it hadn't been for Orbital, I never would
have decided to indulge my musical fanatacism and become a DJ, and if it
hadn't been for the amazing singles that Underworld put out a couple
years ago ("Spoon [Deep Mix]" anyone?), I'd be a much different sounding DJ
now. It was a good night.
As a brief side note, I did go to see Chemical Brothers last Friday
night, and they did in fact go straight for the throat. Those kids do
_not_ fuck around. Bombastic beats, dark atmospheres, and light-show
imagery rife with images of death, destruction, and repression.
Considering how often their music is played by jolly la-di-da handbag
club DJs, it was surprising how much their set made me think of a
different kind of club altogether. Most excellent, especially the new
material, which wasn't quite so {hip|trip|crip}-hop oriented. After they
got into a groove they even seemed to be having fun. I think I saw one of
them smile once or twice.
They also had another wonderful opening DJ (this time DJ Terminator, who
played excellent hardstep jungle with good humor, despite the fact that
he was in the lighting booth up near the ceiling, had no monitor, and
therefore had absolutely no idea what his mixing sounded like).
Unfortunately, the [expletive deleted] Trocadero had its usual quirks,
this time being a dishwater-dull crowd and some very irritating sound
system problems. I'm sorry, but every time I see the name "Blasthaus" on
a flyer, I _know_ the party's going to be full of the sort of irritating
faux-hipsters (which I guess could be shortened by the omission of the
"faux-") guaranteed to set my teeth on edge. Maybe I'm an opinionated,
easily-irritated codger, though. Maybe.
I _was_ surprised at how friendly and cheerful the Trocadero doorfolk
were, I will admit. But now that I think about it, they've always been
nice to me, even when they've been firmly telling me (f'rinstance) that I
can't bring my pepper spray into the club. Maybe I just look close enough
to Goth to pass. Maybe I just relate well to shaven-head death-metal
headz. I shrug.
yrz,
ozymandias
onNow: sqpr - "tundra" / "dimotane co" (I have a feeling I like a
completely different album than the rest of you, because tracks like
these are peachy, but Mr. Jenkinson could drop his bass out the window
and I'd still like the album just as much. In fact, the reason I like
this album as much as I do has to do with its strong resemblance to
works by *cough* Aphex Twin or *cough* *cough* Mu-Ziq more than any
resemblance to the current crop of ambient jazz innovative listening
progressive intelligent dolphin softstep jungle-meisters.)
. . . the self-reflecting image of a narcotized mind . . .
ozymandias G desiderata ogd@organic.com Desperate, Deathless
(415)278-5674
http://www.organic.com/Staff/ogd/ ::AOAIOXXYSZ::