It's two nights before halloween, and usually this is a pretty quiet week in San Francisco as most clubs and music venues are gearing up for their big Halloween bashes and the city is perched waiting for the onslaught of weekend partiers. We had decided to start the All Hallow's Eve festivities a bit early as soon as we noticed DJ Spooky was coming back to town. DJ Spooky a.k.a Paul Miller had played a show earlier this month at San Francisco's Justice League but tonight was a bit different - as he was appearing with his full band.
From the moment they hit the stage and my eye caught the Sun Ra meets John Cage LP taped to the outside of the anvil case that encloses DJ Spooky's decks I had the feeling this was going to be a damned good show. Needless to say I was more than correct.
This tour was in support of his new release Riddim' Warfare and they were performing what DJ Spooky referred to as alterations of the tracks on the new release. The show drifted seamlessly in and out of incredibly varied musical styles. Paul D. Miller was showing us all the promising musical spirit he has embraced and begun to work with and mold into truly unique soundscapes and arrangements. Where past works had been in the realm of Illbient, or ambient soundscapes, these new works ran the gamut. With an exceptional live drummer, a tabla player, a synthesist, a second DJ, a rapper and DJ Spooky himself playing stand up bass and working scratch mastery on his decks, this show unfurled itself as a true journey into the many sounds and styles of urban beat. We were presented with what I felt was some of the best live jungle I had ever heard to date. The drums ripped through complex patterns, tablas filling the gaps with hypnotic grooves and all topped by lush layered bass lines and turntable treats.
Portions of the show spun off into the areas of ambient noise and even free jazz. I was a little skeptical of the rap pieces at first, as rap tends to fall a bit flat in live performances, but they proved themselves and delivered the goods. Throughout the show DJ Spooky engaged in his mantra-like rants on musical style and the oneness of musical styles and flavors. This philosophy he carried inside him he shared with the crowd by performing flawless groove after groove taking influences from past experiementalists, jazz greats, rock and roll, hip hop and jungle artists.
I left DJ Spooky's performance completely satisfied and happy in knowing that there are artists out there embracing the wide variety of musical styles available to them and still successfully reworking, tweaking and mixing them into their own unique creations. This has been an element that was sorely lacking throughout the 80's and with the rise of hip hop, techno, and jungle in the 90's has finally creeped back into our homes and into our CD players. I predict that as the years pass Paul Miller's constructions and compositions are most likely to move in the direction of such musical greats as Sun Ra. It is obvious the seed has been planted and I anxiously look forward to the future.