| #540 |
|
2001 |
Lots of people had been waiting for the full Reprazent show to arrive here in Sydney. Four years after New Forms was always going to make things hard and overall Reprazent were very disappointing. Drum & bass works live when it is originally written for being played live – locals The Hive and The Bird both do this – but when translated from a DJ-mediated sound to a live environment something is lost. MC Dynamite treated the crowd like idiots and too blatantly pushed the merchandising element (“what’s the first single from our new album?”) and rather than help segue between tracks he interrupted the flow. The crowd pleasers of the night, Brown Paper Bag and the atrocious “megamix” (nothing more than a pre-record) showed up the poor sound quality which the sound engineer should have dealt with given the extra subs that had been installed in the Metro. By trying to exist somewhere between a live band and a DJ set up Reprazent did neither well. Maybe it would have been better 4 years ago. Perhaps more exciting will be Herbert’s latest performances in Sydney. With his full band he put on one of the best live shows of last year and now he returns in his Doctor Rockit guise for a live show at the Basement on Valentine’s Day. With a new Herbert album to follow last year’s Indoor Fireworks (as Dr Rockit), you can expect a crazy and slightly kooky show. There’s a sampler of a few tracks off the new album floating around and it sounds like there are going to be some very nice mellow jazz house tracks following the cues of Around The House with Dani Scicilliano on vocals. Keep an eye on www.matthewherbert.com for manifestos and details. Herbert also has managed to drop some of his older and rarer 12”s down to BiWire (www.bi-wire.co.uk) which is the first port of call for all things Andy Weatherall/Two Lone Swordsmen. In good news it looks like Creative Vibes are distributing Stinky Jim’s excellent collection NZ downtempo and dub tracks called Sideways on his label Round Trip Mars. Stinky was the NZ member of Unitone HiFi and is well linked in to the NZ digidub scene. Sideways features tracks from Stinky’s new outfit Phase 5 whose full length album Spacebar should also be available., as well as Sola Rosa, Submariner, Mood Unit and Kevvy Kev. The tracks blend together with little interludes. As they say, ‘choice bro’. Also getting proper distribution is the latest Pitch Black album Electronomicon on Auckland label Kog Transmissions. After two killer shows at Frigid and Kooky a few weeks back you should finally be able to track down a copy of their latest. If not, get them via www.pitchblack.co.nz. Other than that, look forward to the arrival of Si Cut Db, also known as Douglas Benford who runs the seminal London electronic evening Sprawl which has featured everyone from St Ettienne and Pole to Aphex Twin and MuZiq. Douglas is bring a swag of his new material to play one show at Frigid on Sunday Feb 25th. Before that on the 18th is the Little Nobody Soundsystem from Melbourne. Yellow Peril (www.snarl.org)  Goto
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