NRahav@ixl.com
Thu, 5 Nov 1998 12:26:04 -0500
CMJ...lessee....
I thought the problem with all the acts is that they didnt keep up their
groove for more than 5 minutes. Each guy had a few good moments, but every
time a riddim would get the whole crowd pumping it would just get killed
with some ambient sounds or a wack beat right after.
Now, I'm all for experimentation, breaking boundaries, but there are some
fundamentals of musical performance that some of these dudes seemed to be
lacking, maybe spending too much time with they samplers and not enough at
parties.
Another thing... seemes like everyone had a quaylude on the way in...
apathetic crowd.
The only dudes who seemed to be rockin it were Prince Paul and the
Automator, they were playing some fat old school in the overcrowded
upstairs, and I wish they were in the main room because then the Roxy would
have felt like it should...
That said, Luke Vibert's set I thought was pretty good, it had lots of
full-bodied down tempo beats, like the kind on his album Big Soup.
Spooky came through I thought, and I'm not usually crazy into him... But the
drummer and the tabla player (Karsh Kale) were tight. The drummer had jazz
chops and Drum n bass styles, he was pretty sick.
The whole multi-culti ramble was eh, he was preaching about new york's many
facets to a largely white audience in a club that used to be THE center for
fusion of urban cultures in NY, but the music they made really was a nice
blend of live elements, djing, and the various world-sounds.
Talvin Singh's set was most moving - he was doing some sick live shit,
playing the tabla and throwing effects on it, looping those sounds and
playing other stuff over it.
Except for one drumnbassy groove, his stuff was more or less
downtempo/sub-house-speed. Great indian vibes, very emotional.
Another highlight were the visuals, this great video with a barrage of
images of NYC and India blended together, and all kinds of shapes & forms..
One part took shots of south asian eyes and blended them one into the other,
so you saw this face whose features kept changing slightly, watching....
Krush was nice but very downtempo.. some good scratching and live mixing of
sampled soundz.
and Coldcut had some great moments. The had visuals synced up to their
sounds. Seemed like something that you could do in Max. Certain samples
triggered certain video images, but then there was this other jumble of
images that kept going through it all. The beats were fresh, and the
highlight was when they mixed some English Big Beat style riddims with "I
wanna be like you" from the jungle book. On the screen were the orangutangs
dancing, they used the sound samples and the video samples simultaneously.
They took the part where the monkey is doing a trumpet solo, and cut it up,
so that he made this jazzy melody over the beat, and his image on the screen
formed a perfect gestural loop.
The interesting thing was to see how the crowd responded to that. it's like
we were all still little kids and were pacified with the video we loved...
After that high point it was nearing 4 and I said nuffzenuff and headed
home.
Yvonne - props to u for staying up all night...
I just came in late, but didnt quite get enough shuteye...
.·´¯`·.¸¸.N·a·t.¸
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