Click here for more photos from M.I.A.'s Creators Project show
Like
most people who listen to music a lot, I get easily fatigued hearing
people verbally hand-wring over the future of music, technology, and
the various synergy thereof. But that didn't stop me from snatching up
a free pass to this past weekend's Vice Magazine/Intel blowout, held at
the Meatpacking District's Milk Studios. It seems the idea behind this
music-festival-slash-art-gallery-installation-slash-symposium, humbly
entitled the Creators Project,
was to scour the globe to find the point where human pretentiousness
ends and robotic overload begins -- and apparently, it all tends to
involve neon colors and sweaty people wearing sunglasses indoors. But
enough about the audience; making fun of NYC hipsters is a joyless
enterprise, and I'd much rather walk you through the joyful parts of
this nutty gig.
Wittingly or not, the invite-only event served
as a showcase for the solipsism of modern creative culture. Everything
at Creators Project seemed to focus on our generation's relentless need
to document ourselves: from the art itself -- like the installation
piece that allowed you to have your face digitally represented above a
Day-Glo pyramid) -- to the vast majority of attendees, who were
photographing themselves in every possible moment. In a sense, then,
the "creative" aspect of the festival had something to do with the way
that almost every member of the audience was working on his/her own
documenting project at any given time. Was I watching a set, or was I
gathering raw footage to be edited later into a representative piece
about said set?
Deep Screen
As you can
probably tell by the previous two paragraphs, I had a good seven hours
of navel-gazing before the music started up: standing and spacing out
in installations like Mira Calix's My Secret Heart
(an eternal choral loop intertwines with a gigantic 360-degree screen
depicting what appears to be human beings slowly transforming into
lightning bolts), United Visual Artists' Triptych (three 2001-ish
monoliths emitting light and sound that seem to corrolate with viewers'
physical movements), and especially the trippy-and-overwhelming Muti
Randolph piece Deep Screen (is it cliche to point out that being inside this piece is pretty much what it must be like to be inside The Matrix?).
It wasn't until almost sundown that we started hearing the pounding
notes of bands like The Rapture and Gang Gang Dance. By this time, the
art and the free bar had loosened everyone up enough to the point of
incoherence.
Interpol
It still took a few
hours, however, for things to get really nuts. The poorly kept secret
of the event was that M.I.A., although not listed on anything official,
was going to be the de facto headliner -- and anticipation was clearly
off the charts. The music line-up was a strange mix of up-and-coming
oddities and more dependable modern rock acts that could dependably get
people excitable. At no point was this didactic separation more evident
than the simultaneous performances of Interpol and Die Antwoord: the
former, a straight-laced act performing minimalist anthemic new wave
rock, and the latter a spastic and freakish South African rap/rave act
who mix the grotesque and the amusing in a confrontational mashup of
Afrikaner and English. Neither act was really on the forefront of any
kind of technological event horizon -- but neither was playing
Glastonbury that weekend, and both of them were able to blow the roof
off their respective corner of the gallery.
Sleigh Bells
Before I get into Die Antwoord, a word about Sleigh Bells, the band that went on before them. Amid
all the high-tech laser shows and talk of creative boundary breaking,
it was interesting to see a Sleigh Bells set, because they kind of
straddle everything. They are both high-tech and lo-tech, and they are
both forward-thinking and just straight-up rocking. Their set-up is
borderline-retarded: just a guitar, a vocalist, and an iPod that plays
the drums. They have a back-to-basics vibe, but at the same time, it's
hard to deny that vocalist Alexis Krauss is a budding rock diva, with a
magnetic and sweaty presence that is both glamorous and unpretentious.
Emerging from a haze of strobed-out smoke, guitarist Derek Miller began
pounding out the intro to Slayer's classic "South of Heaven" before the
band ripped into their own senses-pounder, "Tell ‘Em." The way this
band mixes up metal, punk, dance, electro, and pop signifiers and
sounds is electrifying, especially since they pull it off so
effortlessly. Sleigh Bells' music can fit into so many spaces: they
could play the smallest little bar or the largest rock festival, and it
probably wouldn't matter. As they ended their set -- drenched in sweat,
blasting their final chords over an epilepsy-inducing strobe light --
it was clear that a new force in rock has emerged.
Salem (footage from their 2010 SXSW appearance)
I
took a sojourn from the second-floor gallery down to the first to check
out Salem, a strange three-piece hailing from Traverse City, Michigan.
They're an odd fit for this event, if only because the celebratory
nature of the Creators Project is pretty much anathema to the dreary
drudge of Salem's haunting muse. Sounding not unlike Julee Cruise
warbling over T-Pain, the band mix crunk beats, gauzy synths, and
almost-not-there vocals to a startling effect that's both disturbing
and beautiful. Since this was a Vice-sponsored event, I'll say here that the band's look was a quintessential DO:
the mismatched clusterfuck of their appearance (you had one guy in a
wifebeater and shorts, another wearing a flowing medieval shirt with a
plethora of Wiccan-y necklaces, and a woman in high heels and short
black dress) was so discordant as to be brilliant, especially when
paired with their we-don't-care attitude. Never saying a word to the
audience, they softly pummelled the crowd with gloomy warblings that
seemed to come from a dark, indistinct place.
Die Antwoord
I
sauntered back upstairs just in time to catch the debut NYC performance
of Die Antwoord, who are definitely one of the stranger acts to ever
grace an American stage. A lawless and anarchic rap duo (backed by
their DJ, Hi-Tek), one toweringly tall (the intimidating Ninja) and one
puzzingly short (the pixie-ish Yo-Landi Vi$$er), Die Antwoord blew our
face off with boundless energy that in a live setting allows you to
forget your nagging suspicions that the whole thing is a put-on. Much
ink has been spilled attempting to figure out if the group is a joke
act, owing not only to their out-of-nowhere media blitz but also to the
sheer weirdness of what they do. What comes across as almost gratingly
irritating on record is mind-blowingly exciting live, as Ninja and
Yo-Landi proceeded to attack this overcrowded room of hipsters with a
ferocity that was both unexpected and refreshingly vicious. They
bounced around the stage like they'd been electrocuted, almost defying
the laws of gravity. Tracks like "Enter the Ninja" and "Wat Pomp" might
sound like some kind of 21st-century Dr. Demento fare when you listen
to the MP3s -- but in person, they are absolutely blistering. I have a
suspicion that novelty of Die Antwoord might actually last a bit longer
than some might have guesstimated, now that the actual humans are
touring America and proving that they are two of the more capable MC's
at work anywhere.
M.I.A.
After Die Antwoord left
the stage, the mood in the room heightened, as the anticipation of
M.I.A.'s rumored appearance hit fever pitch. Would she show? Would she
play more than one song? Would she (ulp) be terrible? Everyone got
their iPhone cameras ready and aimed as the lights eventually went out,
and a red strobe and a lone drummer started rat-a-tat-tatting in
unison, signaling the start of recent single "Born Free." When the song
kicked into its frantic riff, M.I.A. emerged, resplendant in an outfit
that could have been purchased from a street vendor around the corner
for a few bucks: a camo windbreaker with the hood up and cheapo
sunglasses with pot leaves over the eyes that had the strange effect of
making her look like a rapping Jawa. Oh, and a rainbow wig that she
never removed during her hour-long set. But the off-the-cuff zaniness
of her appearance was in stark contrast to the tightness of her flow.
In the past, M.I.A. has proven a pretty hit-or-miss performer (as
anyone who caught her last Mass. appearance at the Worcester Palladium
a few years ago can attest). But clearly with the build-up to her new
album (Maya, her third, out in mid-July), she's gotten her
proverbial act together, with a live drummer, a tight DJ, and a
flanking squadron of backup singers and dancers, all moving in sync to
a precision set that moved seamlessly from new material to older tracks
from Kala and Arular without missing a beat. The
highlight came near the end, when a spirited run-through of "Galang"
ended with an extended shout-through of the song's coda, a wordless
melodic chant that had the entire room yelling in unison. M.I.A. dove
into the crowd with her mic; and for a few minutes, her inclusive
world-beat-mashing made more sense than anything in the world.
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