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The Warfield November 24, 2002 Review by Jake Thomas I went into this show thinking that it was only going to be DJ Shadow, as I could find no information anywhere as to opening bands. I don't know if it was never posted, or I'm just stupid...most likely the latter. Anyways, when I got there I found out that there was not one, but two openers! I was a little bummed, as I was hoping to get right to the meat of the matter and not fuck around too much, but what are you going to do? First up was Tino Corp, which was just a couple of dudes who operated a bunch of pre-programmed bits and pieces, samples, a little bit of turntable, and drum machines, all backed up by a projected video that ran in synch with the music. Apparently, one or both of these guys used to be in Meat Beat Manifesto, a somewhat popular band that I could never get into back in the day when people were talking about them. Most of Tino Corp's music was just ok, generally sounding as if it would fit in well with some of the future primitive stuff out there. But there were a couple of stand out tracks - the first, which involved all of these samples and film of drum instruction that was pretty funny, and then another song about Kool Moe Dee that involved them splicing in Homer Simpson saying 'Moe' for most of the times it was used in the song. Even though they weren't doing anything terribly exciting, their set was fairly short and the video kept it pretty lively. Next up was Lyrics Born, A member of DJ Shadow's Quannum crew. I have seen him before and he is probably my favorite of all those guys (Shadow excluded, of course). His music could probably be aptly lumped in with a lot of good-time party rap, but he does it well and I enjoy it. More than anything, he has this rad raspy voice that is one of my favorites out there in hip hop today, and his delivery is this half singing style that sometimes makes me think of a really mellow version of dancehall. His set was good, nothing groundbreaking, but the crowd seemed to dig it and so did I. Finally, Shadow was on. He had in insane set up of four turntables, a sampler, and other miscellaneous gadgets to concoct his beautiful brew of music. There was also three giant, equally sized screens set up behind him that showed some really great clips that were synched up to the music. Sometimes all three would be used as one giant screen, other times they would all be running different things. There were also cameras set up around Shadow and they would project him on the screen from time to time, just so you could see exactly what sort of mad scientist stuff he was up to. He played almost exclusively tracks from his albums and the UNKLE album, with maybe 5% coming from other sources. Instead of playing one song right after the next, he played mini-sets - where he would talk to the crowd for a few minutes, then mix a bunch of his songs together for 20 or 30 minutes, then chat up the crowd and take a little break while he set up for the next mini-set. I found the whole thing truly amazing, kicking back in my upstairs seat and just trying to soak it all in, and getting a contact buzz from all the pot smoke floating in the air around me. ©2002 playinginfog.com |