Caught the "Carl Craig with friends from the Innerzone Orchestra" gig at the Knitting Factory here in NYC last thursday. The friends turned out to be Francisco Mora playing congas and trap kit, and DJ Spooky on single turntable, powerbook and mbira. Mr. Craig had a pile of unidentifiable (by me) boxes with wires and knobs, as well as a keyboard, vocal mike and powerbook. It was an odd and mostly quite engaging set. Probably apt that they were at the Knitting Factory, as it was conceived and paced more like a free improv gig than a dance set.
So, sure, it noodled on and on until reaching a mighty sustained out-jazz-like noise-gasm, came back down for some afterglow and a few more stray ideas, then got off stage. What seemed interesting to me was Carl Craig's contribution to the overall effect, which for a good chunk of the set was hard techno sounding stuff that he was modulating much more quickly and constantly than I would have expected were it a dance situation. There was this odd nice contrast between the pounding, repititious, pre-fab techno grooves and this constant twiddling of volume, EQ and effects knobs (in effect his tools of improvisation), and the relatively organic sounds of the drummer and DJ Spooky's noisy scratching.
Anyway, I kinda hate improv sets most of the time, and I was rather disarmed by this one; seemed like all the participants were listening to each other and responding creatively, it worked.
Well, mostly. you know how it is with improv.
kurt
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