The Ninja Tune Stealth '97 tour pulled through the Boston area, playing
the Middle East downstairs bar to an almost completely filled house.
When I arrived, a local dj was spinning some jungle, and doing rather
well at it. Not sure of his name. After that a local Boston rap band came
on for about 15 minutes, and hurled curses at the audience. May I be the
first to say, "Yeeeesh."
After that, that Ninjas took over on the decks. Somebody was on for a
half an hour. Lovely recall, huh? Then came dj vadim. Slow, boring
hip-hop. Mixed well.
Then the treat of the night was dj kid koala, who did some turntable
tricks the likes of which I've never seen in anywhere in North America.
Tracks were all hip-hop and dirty funk, ranging from 90-110bpm. You ain't
lived till you've seen two turntables being backspun a quarter or eighth
note each, to produce alternating beats from each channel. The sentence
above barely does him justice, because in addition to his back-spinning
and scratching, (which never missed a beat,) the killer was this: no
headphones, during the entire half hour set. Not even to beat mix.
After that was dj food. Typically cool, cutting it up in the hip-hop,
electro style. Don't know if they did any jungle, because Boston is
insane, where the subways close at 12:30 and the bars at 2.
Bandspotting: Squarepusher, Black Science Orchestra, Herbie Hancock and
bjork were the ones I recognized.
Phil Downey
Paul Hartnoll's take on the meaning of life: "There isn't much of a
point, but I quite like it."