Matt Kelly Mania
So Blockhead and Sixtoo. What a different approach to live music it was. First up was Blockhead doing that same Fennesz laptop routine for about an hour or so but I really can’t bring myself into saying something negative about it because the tunes were so beautiful. So yes I could touch upon the click tick apple style and how different it was compared to the Sixtoo performance but let’s just hail this sample genius for making all the right choices during the gig. He played quite a lot from his "music by cavelight" record and it was all very good. Don’t know why some people mock his beats cuz they really sounded great! And Blockhead is such a great character: every time someone shouted in the audience at him or even when he played some Michael Jackson or some other 80’s stuff, he always had this little funny grin on his face which was great. And apparently to his amazement there was a big turnout (ca. 350 people) which he even mentioned like two times. I wonder how the lonely gigs in god knows where land are?
When Sixtoo came on stage with DJ Signify (Lex-fame) and bass player Matt Kelly, I was real curious at how he would perform his music. It has been said and said that his music is kind of dark, stark and/or moody. While the latter is still probably true for his live show, dark and stark were nowhere to be seen. In fact, the show was soo LIVELY and energetic that I was really caught off guard at first. Yeah he played a lot of songs from “chewing on glass and other miracle cures” but he reinterpreted them immensely and brought it all live with a remarkable passion and an outstanding virtuosity. A lot credit goes to DJ Signify and Matt Kelly as well (maybe Matt was even the star of the evening?). That was their major plus imo: such an interesting line up! You got two djs (signify and sixtoo), one mc (sixtoo), two mpc pros (signify and sixtoo) and then a bass player (also handling various pedals and effects). God what an odd idea you’d say to include a bass player but boy did this work out greatly. Matt added so much intensity and again that liveness that you need in such shows and on top of it all, he was standing there like the next Jonny Greenwood. YEAH I admit there was a certain Matt Kelly hype in our little clique but Sixtoo and Signify were no less though. That variation just played out so well. Sometimes you had sixtoo on decks, sometimes signify. Then Sixtoo would start rapping, then they would chop up Buck 65’s voice. Or there would be instances where they’d go much darker but a few moments later it would be so melodic again.
As you can probably feel by now, I was absolutely sold. Best 4 euros spent this month! The only unsatisfying feeling after the show is that I didn’t know who did those superb visuals for the Sixtoo show. The Blockhead visuals were pretty good as well (they were done by a guy named Lucidhouse who won this video competition over at ninjatune.net) but well Sixtoo was a little bit ahead of Blockhead in almost every department yesterday and that also included the visuals.
ps just found out at sixtoo.net, that it was Presstube who did the visuals. Props!
Inspiration Links:
http://www.sixtoo.net/
http://www.ninjatune.net/ninja/artist.php?id=108
http://www.djsignify.com/
http://www.ninjatune.net/blockhead/
http://www.presstube.com/
EDIT:
check out Sixtoo's Blog as well!
