When I was a freshman, I incurred the wrath of Internet-scouring Phish fans who took issue with a handful of lines in a piece I wrote for the Observer about my New Year's Eve with Santa Cruz band Sound Tribe Sector 9 (STS9).
Leaving out all of the horribly offensive things I said about Phish, their entire fan base and everyone who owns or has owned Birkenstocks, the gist of said article was that I thought it was inappropriate for STS9 to be lumped in with so-called jam bands just because they play long songs.
If electronica-leaning STS9 has anything in common with Phish, it's that they are excellent live performers and throw down particularly hard on occasions like New Year's. That's (roughly) all I said. And I got heckled with some threats dastardly enough to get Dick Cheney excited.
Nearly three years later, I still agree with that sentiment. Bong-waterboarding threats be damned; the only serious similarity between STS9 and Phish is that, given a properly large occasion, both bands are/were able to host truly elite celebrations. I solidified this belief two weekends ago when I made another pilgrimage to Colorado to see STS9 level the beautiful Red Rocks Amphitheatre.
The group did not disappoint, but while I'd love to repeatedly talk about STS9's ingenuity, spiritually transcendent melodies and generally superior live performance, I think there are more interesting things to say about the weekend's two sets from hip-hop production golden boy Flying Lotus. Also, I'm confident I can talk about him without offending that many people.
It's been a gigantic year for Flying Lotus and his spaced-out, deliberately sloppy beats. In 2006, the then-22-year-old debuted to a largely unwelcoming critical reception, getting written off by many as a Madlib-J Dilla biter. Hilariously, much of the praise for 2008's "Los Angeles" is for so tactfully displaying his Madlib-J Dilla influences, which are hard to miss. His beats tend to be ever-so-slightly off-time, and he arranges his theme into a foggy, textured expanse. His music feels and sounds organic the same way that Madlib and J Dilla's do, a statement that, in hip-hop, is like telling a baseball player that he plays like Albert Pujols and Alex Rodriguez.
Still, despite (or maybe even because of) the many aesthetic similarities between FlyLo and hip-hop production's upper pantheon, he's not REALLY a hip-hop producer. The spacey fuzziness of his music that so strongly evokes Dilla also sounds a lot like dubstep, especially when he completely drops out of the low end (more on that in a minute). Minimal at times and definitely "experimental" sounding, FlyLo calls to mind left-field dubstep producer Kode9 at least as much as he does Madlib.
Exactly where he fits in the STS9 aesthetic, then, is unclear, but Boulder-based Euphonic Conceptions (run by two STS9 loyalists) booked him to headline their afterparty following STS9's fan-club-only show at the Fox Theater. I love Flying Lotus and drooled at the opportunity to see him live, but this seemed a little questionable even to me.
First of all, while FlyLo's popularity may be exploding, he's still very much a niche musician: massively popular within certain circles, but generally anonymous everywhere else. As a longtime member of the STS9 sphere, I certainly wouldn't have counted their faithful as a group particularly down with FlyLo. Moreover, having been to a slew of STS9 afterparties, I can attest that up-tempo, dance-ready music tends to win the post-STS9 crowd over — not (literally) offbeat, atmospheric, quasi-hip-hop.
Never doubt Euphonic Conceptions. They had the brass to stake their reputations on an unlikely headliner who went ahead and absolutely blew the doors off the Fox Theatre. Expertly pairing tracks from "Los Angeles" with a mind-blowing array of dubstep, IDM (intelligent dance music) and hip-hop tracks and cranking the lowend up to 11, FlyLo put on a DJ set for the ages.
Tracks like "Shhh" and "Golden Diva" define the fuzzy naturalness that makes his music so good, but that — I thought — would make it less than ideal in a late-night setting. So wrong. By accenting the low ends — I mean, REALLY accenting; Gramps in the back could feel his fillings vibrate — FlyLo turned these songs from blunted head-nodders into body-flinging bangers. The same is true with the explosive Daedelus single, "Hrs:Mins:Secs:", which, given the FlyLo low-end treatment, sounds like a fax machine bringing about Armageddon. The mercurial "Archangel" by down-tempo dubstep artist Burial grew wings under FlyLo' skilled hands, and already-bangers by Caspa and Rustie rumbled and wobbled the Fox like a skinny jackhammer-er. Whatever relative obscurity he may have had with that crowd disappearevd as he left the stage to ferocious applause and a deafening chorus of "FLYLO WHAT?!"
What does this have to do with STS9? This is yet ANOTHER example of the band and its community's penchant for ratcheting up the festivities on special occasions. How do you improve on seeing one of the country's premier live bands in perhaps the best outdoor venue in the country? Bring out one of the hottest, most original musicians in the world, give him some new subs, and tell him to go nuts. Need more proof? Just ask FlyLo. His parting words to the Fox Theater: "Dayum y'all, this sh-t was FUN." Well said.
