The Soul'd Out Music Festival is in its third year, working to bring mindful, conscious independent music together for 13 days of ear bliss. This year featured, among others, Portland's own Esperanza Spalding (who rightfully beat out Justin Beiber for "Best New Artist" at the 2011 Grammys), SBTRK, Justice and DJ Shadow, who plays tonight to finish the last leg of the festival.
There is a gigantic orb on stage that looks like it's made out of paper mache. It seems like an annoyance for the opening DJs working around it, until Nerve, the second opener of the night, uses it as 3D projector, spitting color blocked lines and shapes on its front.?
Five years ago this mind washing musical act would probably not share the same stage as DJ Shadow. Brother Ali, Aesop Rock or some other backpack rapper would've been on the bill. Tonight, Nerve is werping and whirring through its act. It sounds like being on whippets in a department store that plays only exaggerated elevator music, only everyone around you isn't shopping. Instead their eyes are closed and their heads are tilted upwards, illuminated by this tripped-out light show, swaying with half-drunk smiles or dancing ecstatically to the drum heavy, electrobeat.?
This scene doesn't stop when Shadow comes on. For a second people are transfixed by the orb sitting in the middle of the stage. Now it's lit up and there's no one around it, and that makes sense because there's someone inside of it, and that someone is going to be in it for the rest of the night. Massive turn tables are set up in this humongous, fragile ball and all we can see is the silhouette of someone tweaking them. It's stair-stepping dread lock-rearing mayhem when the orb splits open to reveal the California DJ, whose 2011 releases include a full-length album, The Less You Know The Better, and an EP, Scale It Back, both sounding uncharacteristically club steppy, playing with mainstream hip hop samples and ambient tones that most of his earlier stuff didn't really touch.
The DJ Shadow I remember--the one that I was introduced to by a much cooler friend in high school--is not the same as what I see on stage tonight. I'm not saying anything about the quality of what's coming through the speakers, and I'm not introducing some "back in my day" rant, either. I'm simply saying that dubbed out dance-tron club music is not what I expect from the sample-based DJ, who's been known to feature Keak da Sneak, Q-Tip and Lifesavas on his tracks.?
Take "Building Steam With A Grain Of Salt" from 2005's Entroducing, which is this eerie, piano trance marathon turned quick, funk house production. The track is almost 7 minutes long and never loses edge. Or "Halfway Home," from Shadow's In Tune And Out Of Time (2006), where he collaborates with Blackalicious in a spoken-word track full of heavy drum machine and old school scratching. There is a pretty heavy contrast between his older stuff, some of which he performs tonight, and his newer stuff with its drum and bass, ambient brostep vibe. This contrast might be buried a bit by tonight's audacious light show (where at one point Shadow's sphere envelops him and fills with blood with splashing images as real as watching Merlot pour into a wine glass), but it's apparent to me as I leave hungry for his late waxy soul style.?
Tagged: live review
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