Prefuse 73 Four Tet

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Part of the fun of being a member of an audience is that you get the opportunity to become an integral element of the performance. Artists who claim otherwise, who boast that the crowd has little bearing on how the evening will progress, are either opening slot neophytes or battle-hardened veterans who have weathered Monsters of Rock caliber shock and awe boo campaigns. The acts slated to grace the stage of New York's Bowery Ballroom on the evening of May 29th however, were neither rookies nor old men, yet only half of the roster felt compelled to make the $18 ticket worth the cost.

Stripped of their compulsory electronic producer pseudonyms, a line-up comprised of John Herndon, Dan Snaith, Kieran Hebden and Scott Herren reads more like the bottom half of the Pittsburgh Pirates split squad then a list of electronica's new darlings. Don't let the obscure names fool you though, because these four gentlemen are as savvy with their chosen weapons (including but not limited to drums, keys, laptops and the all-purpose MPC) as any producers out there and, in the great tradition of drumming up anticipation prior to a tour, each have just recently released their most inspiring records to date.

Much like the wave forms these guys fuck with on their computers and samplers, the night was one of tremendous highs and lows. We showed early to see one of our favorite indie workhorses, drummer John Herndon, perform under his solo guise as A Grape Dope. Once the drummer for Champaign's Poster Children, later moving on to '90s acts like the For Carnation, Five Style and Isotope 217, and now splitting time between Tortoise, the Eternals and Prefuse 73 (more on that later) Herndon is simply the man, or rather, the machine. He is the consummate touring and session drummer, always on fire, playing with the type of Bonham/Perkins strength that renders microphones useless. And after spending the days playing other people's music, it only seems logical he'd break out the solo chops.

His short opening set was a valiant, yet failed attempt to transform his deeply dubbed-out atmospheric breaks into a palatable live product. Hopping from kit to sampler to keys, Herndon laid tight rhythms over looped vocals with a master percussionist's skill, yet I'm sure most of the handful of early arrivals felt like they were privy to a private John Herndon drum seminar. There are certainly worse ways to start an evening.

Next up, Manitoba, and to say my curiosity was at fever pitch would be an understatement. The rumor was that Dan Snaith, a.k.a. Manitoba, was touring with a trio and I wondered how he would be able to pull off the large sound of his newest record, Up in Flames. An ambitious about-face from the melodic IDM of his debut, Up in Flames more similarly reflects the orchestral pop density of Spiritualized. Only a redefinition of the power trio could pull this off. Rush would have been proud of their countrymen.

Claiming the stage adorned in red hoodies and animal masks, Manitoba stormed through cuts from the new record with the always welcome double drum kit frontal attack, a move that seems virtually infallible, like a Little League double steal or buying flowers for your girlfriend. With the kids pressed in the front and even us old guys in the back set free from Herndon's dub spell, the new power trio from the Great White North successfully demonstrated that there's much more to an "electronic" act than a fixed stare into the fluorescent glow of a laptop. The tone was set, the bar was raised. The little known producer with the critically praised (spelled D-O-O-M) sophomore record came with a full bag of tricks -- masks, engaging visuals, two drummers, matching outfits. They transformed a show into performance and, unfortunately, set the stage for a monumental disappointment as soon as Four Tet set up his laptops.

At this point in the evening, after being lulled to sleep by A Grape Dope and then reanimated into attention by a cold glass of Manitoba, the last thing the boys and I needed was to go back to dreamland. Four Tet wasn't just boring...my ass was locked down into carbon freeze. Deep sleep. I was an extra from Coma. And it had little to do with the music.

The sound was as crisp as it could be, amplified loudly over the exceptional sound system of the Bowery Ballroom. Hebden stood dutifully behind his twin Vaio lap tops chopping and remixing pieces from some his best tracks off his phenomenal new record Rounds and its equally brilliant antecedent Pause. The live versions he was constructing were seamless, intelligent and at times even beautiful. Yet he did nothing. Nada. Zip. He just stood there. No performance whatsoever. He bobbed to his beat, he moved his arms around enigmatically behind his equipment. He smiled. He brooded. And the more he did nothing, the more I had to do something, thus heading downstairs to the basement bar for a refresher. Remember, this is an indie show. At a performance space. Located in the United States. That means no one will dance; they will stand locked into place, eyes transfixed to the stage, watching anything, studying everything. It's fucking boring. Maybe I should be more upset at the crowd response, but Four Tet is a musical wunderkind who moonlights in a rock band. He should know better.

Over the course of a few cocktails, the boys and I agreed that it was unforgivable that Four Tet (again, one of my favorite producer/musicians) resorted to the ill-fated the laptop thing. Of course, recreating electronic music, even music as organic as Four Tet's, in a live setting is a difficult task. The Manitoba maelstrom was a live performance really, flavored with electronic elements. But really, how can you pull off an interesting, engaging live electronic performance? The answer was about ten minutes away in the form of Prefuse 73.

Poor Scott Herren. As he and his compatriot Rob Hall took to the stage, the air was thickened with hope and expectation. Could he resurrect the packed house from the torpor induced by Four Tet's woeful performance, or would he simply fall in line, a controller of machines, a pusher of buttons? The stage was filled with synths, triggers, and midi tools of all sorts, with Herren's hallowed MPC taking center stage next to a pair of battle-ready Technics and in front of, oh yes, a drum set with Herndon, who had begun the night, sitting at attention, ready to destroy us all. As the room slowly filled with the first notes of Herren's cut-up collage calisthenics, a sense of collective appreciation shot through the audience rebounding like a Superball, hitting and exploding peoples' minds like an animated atom or Michael Ironside's in Scanners. See, we weren't just happy that Prefuse felt compelled to make his set interesting, we were satisfied, ecstatic really, because we knew he would. The man makes music that is technically interesting, sometimes melancholy, yet still strapped to the beat. Bored with the predictable patterns that govern commercial hip-hop and blessed with the studio ability to capture any sample and matriculate it into a song, Herren is the rare breed of musician with both technical superiority and creative soul. His productions are not the cultural appropriation of hip-hop, but rather the perfect amalgam of hip-hop's meter and electronica's progressive ingenuity. He seemingly does everything right.

Watching Scott Herren work the 16 touch pads on his MPC is like watching a 53-year-old accountant calculate pages of addition in under a minute. Popping and twisting, programming on the fly, Herren is certainly the best I have ever seen, a master of a machine that, while hugely important to the hip-hop producer's studio needs, is not often enough hauled out onstage. While many will argue against the MPC's merit as an "instrument" (the same logic that disqualifies a computer or turntables), those blowhards have never seen this man play, especially in concert with Rob Hall using forward and transform scratches to create schizophrenic atmospherics and John Herndon's human metronome rhythms filling out the programmed beats. The sound was lush, the routine was tight, the performance was a performance and kept us interested long into the night, reinvigorated and confident (for the moment) of the direction electronic performance is heading.