So last weekend I went to the second night of Warp20 in New York. The show was in the Winter Garden at the World Financial Center, which is sort of a bizarre place to see a show, because it's basically the atrium of a kind-of-crappy mall at the ground floor of all the WFC offices.
The show was billed as:
Jimmy Edgar
Hudson Mohawke
Clark
Warp DJs
Jimmy Edgar cancelled at the last minute, and the Warp DJs turned out to be one DJ who played first and played way too long. The only thing more boring than watching some guy DJ in the middle of the mall when the sun is still up is if this same DJ looks completely disinterested the whole time he played. I guess he was just there to fill time, especially since Jimmy Edgar cancelled, but he played probably for about 2 hours: way longer than either of the main acts.
Then Hudson Mohawke played, and I have to say I just don't get it. I mean he makes decent beats, but I'm just not feeling his whole aesthetic. A lot of the elements in his tracks just sound kind of half-assed to me. Whatever, dude is decent, I just don't see what the big fuss is.
Chris Clark (fine, Clark, whatever) played last, of course, and just slayed for about an hour. The whole time he was just rocking two chunky MPCs and a DJ mixer. His set was a mix of crowd-pleasers (Ted, Diesel Raven, Growls Garden, etc.) and unreleased tracks aimed squarely at the dance floor. Most of the unreleased tracks seemed like his personal take on a particular genre (breakcore/jungle, hard trance, and even a dubstep-ish track that was fucking massive) sort of like the drum and bass track on Throttle Furniture. Clark is clearly still one of the best producers on Warp, and I don't understand why they didn't put him on the bill of one of the bigger nights .
that third video is what i'm talking about. those dark dnb tracks destroy. i saw jimmy edgar here one time (opening for jamie lidell). i liked it, but it seemed more fit for sleek background music at a tapas bar than anything else, and everyone seemed bored.
ReplyDeletethat mall setup is bizarre. techno in america has no proper home.
good call on the hudson mohawke stuff.....i don't get it either.
ReplyDeleterad you got to go, too bad it was sort of dissappointing. i've not really heard too much lately i've been taken by aside from some of that live chris clark stuff. there's a killer set from earlier this year i'll try to find and get up.
i wouldn't say i was disappointed. i only really went to see chris clark and he delivered as promised. some of the other acts at the other nights would have been cool: jamie lidell is great live, but i've seen him twice already. battles and flying lotus would have been cool to see, but whatever.
ReplyDelete