From Neb Eliven Sent Wed, Nov 11th 1998, 03:06
From Neb Eliven Sent Wed, Nov 11th 1998, 03:06
I got inside Sonar last night just as Luke was starting his set. The music he chose was predictably fun. He started with a few ninja-tune tracks, but then he switched to a more mainstream vibe. It was arguably great - he started with a great Tribe Called Quest track, then an instrumental version of Digital Underground's humpty dance, then two B-Boys tracks (including the dreaded intergalactic) and finshed this mini mtv segment with MAW's Mawtilus. Not what I expected. After that he went back to his less well-known records. His style was fun, choppy hip hop. He did a little basic scratching, and he used the delay unit on his mixer a LOT. He's a pretty good DJ. A small dissapointment was that I was hoping to hear some more of his own material, maybe even some reworks that never made it onto a release. DJ Krush, on the other hand, is an excellent DJ. He too used the delay unit a lot, but in a different way. Whereas Luke would use it to add small effect here and there, DJ Krush used it as a compositional tool. As he started his set he pulled a bunch of records out of his box and laid them, stacked, beside the decks. These were all beatless instrumental tracks - a typical move was for him to lay down the beats on one deck and then pull up one of these instrumental records and fade in these deep, jazzy sax solos, heavily effected through the delay. It made for great effect, especially if you recognized the underlying song. Most of his set consisted of a very slow, jazzy vibe, which didn't make it very easy for the twinkies to dance. Later in the set he played a couple of japanese rap tracks that I didnt recognize. They're apparently very well known in Japan - a large portion (I'd even say most) of the people at the show were japanese, and most of them hooted at the beginning of both songs. A good show - I'm happy I went. bbn