DJ Spooky, The Gray Kid, and Person @ Rock'n'Roll Hotel
Person is a crappy singer. There, I said it. His performance last night at the Rock and Roll Hotel had me thinking I had stumbled upon a tragic highschool talent show. The kind where talent-less wonders are given a forum to sing into real microphones instead of into their shower nozzles, and the result isn’t pretty. Person aka Miguel Lacsamana takes himself way too seriously. Fortunately much of his singing was drowned out by the electro-pop beats of his mixmaster friend Bernard. But what lyrics I could make out were centered around the overstated sexuality of Har Mar Superstar. Sample lyric: “I’ll be your teacher / Your student / Your doctor / Your patient.” No really, it’s ok, you don’t have to.
If Person’s milquetoast performance left listeners a little bleary-eyed, the Gray Kid’s larger-than-life persona was the perfect antidote. Watching the Gray Kid perform is kind of like watching those scenes in Ghost where Patrick Swayze speaks through the body of Whoopi Goldberg: a guy with a hipster-geek haircut is mysteriously possessed by the spirit of hiphop, and the result is dynamite. As the Gray Kid, D.C. native Steve Cooper rhymes at a lightning pace over floor-shaking breakbeats, and impressively manages to sound studio-slick while doing so. By turns dirrrty (think Ludacris), glam (think Prince) and indie (think Gym Class Heroes), the Gray Kid is above all else tongue-in-cheek, with a madcap cockiness that may or may not be ironic. He howls, he sambas, he dances on chairs, and it’s all so darn catchy that he gets away with it.
The highlight of the evening was the mind-bogglingly talented DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid. After more than a decade of triphop innovation, Spooky had nothing to prove to the audience last night, but managed to knock everyone’s socks off anyway. Dance music usually falls into one of two categories. In the first is avant-garde music that can be appreciated for its inventiveness, but is not particularly fun to listen to. The second category comprises music that is gratuitously irresistible, and you might not want to admit how much you enjoy it (i.e., The Black Eyed Peas). Last night, Spooky pulled off the rare feat of falling into both categories. He served up a mash-up of Outkast’s “Hey Ya” and the Beatles’ “Paperback Writer,” then later mixed Sean Paul’s “Get Busy” with the Guess Who’s “American Woman,” all to splendid effect.
Sipping red wine demurely behind his turntables, Spooky gave center-stage to a big screen showing videos of, ahem, the Black Eyed Peas, Gene Kelly, and some gas-mask-wearing skateboarders. His mixing synced well with the video display, and made the evening a multi-sensory experience. As a nod to triphop’s offspring, grime, Spooky also scratched stellar remixes of London rappers Dizzee Rascal and Ms. Dynamite.
DJ Spooky is a globalist’s musician; he provides the soundtrack to a fun time that could take place anywhere, from Tel Aviv to Ibiza to Brooklyn. Last night he brought the party to his own hometown. Once he’d hooked us in with the Billboard hits, his set began to veer more toward electronica with minimal vocals. The result was an illbient dreamscape that gave DAM! Fest patrons their money’s worth.