My ticket read:
DJ Thanksgiving Brown / Jel (Solo Set) / Black Moth Super Rainbow / Subtle
Knitting Factory
Friday May 3rd
I knew who was playing, but this was a rare show where I didn't go to see the headlining band. Apparently no one else did, either.
Jel, one of the members of Subtle, began by showcasing live beats. The crowd was prepared to stand in a typically apatehtic, zombie-ish stance, but Jel's instrument-like mastery of the drum machine forced the crowd into a dancing trance.
That trance only lasted about two minutes. People were there to see Black Moth Super Rainbow. I thought I was there to see them too- until they started playing. If it weren't for their bizarre video projections (that would even throw Dan Deacon and his Wham City Collective for a loop) I might have died of boredom in their cloud of aural LSD. At times, I felt like I was walking inside of a Pratt student's acid trip. At other, I felt I was severely missing out on some huge joke. All I was certain of was that their brand of psych-electronica is absolutely best enjoyed recorded. At home. Without hippies.
An exodus of mass proportions followed Black moth's set, so I decided to stay and figure out what it was about Subtle that people didn't bother to try to relate to, or just couldn't grasp. A black guy with glasses popped into the doorway to take a picture of the crowd, and then disappeared. Oh my god was that Tunde Adebimpe from TV on the Radio? Yes it was!
Subtle goes on stage wearing white. He's stands near an altar fixed with skulls, fur, chattering teeth and other, much less identifiable objects. Doseone, the pint-sized firecracker of a lead singer struts on stage with a shadowy chin and an overgrown mohawk. Some Asian twenty-something in the crowd mutters something about hip-hop staying alive. Some bald middle-aged man in front of him pesters me about back injuries in old age. Forks were hurled, Obama was mentioned and so was Hitler. What the hell kind of group is this? A cult?
Maybe it wasn't a cult, but it was something strange. Subtle's stage presence seemed to hint at the music's peaceful dichotomy between respecting the past and forward progression: live instrumentation vs. turntablism, Doseone's primitive banshee voice vs. the technology he runs his voice through, a cello played with slide guitar bottlenecks and connected to effect pedals. These aspects of their live show were subtle bridges between the past and the present.
When listening to him at home, Doseone's esoteric 'raps' (some may prefer the word 'rants' or 'tangents') go right over my head, but somehow in the dark, cramped hall it feels like it makes perfect sense. Somehow it's logical that something so 'subtle' hits me like a brick. I understand the crowd, the costumes, and the altar. It's obvious: I've been welcomed into the cult.
CHECK OUT:
Doseone's now defunct project cLOUDDEAD (particularly the "Ten" album). His Anticon. label (which is more of an artist collective) supports a lot of artists that appear in various permutations to form various different bands. cLOUDEAD was one of those permutations, and Why? is one of the most current ones. Jel, a member of Subtle and Anticon.'s Themselves, and 13&God uses drum machines without sequencing, meaning that he essentially programs the machine so he can play it like a virtual drum with his fingers- more of an instrument than a tool. I especially like his little dance at the beginning, back when his hair was long.
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