Pop Pete promised us all completely naked women. It did not happen. Truth be told, I was reluctant to believe such an exuberant claim, but it's fun to dream. He proceeded to ask the audience who among us was gonna do some e and than cheat on their girlfriend; preferably with a fat chick? Pop Pete, the front man from Hot Sex and High Finance does not mince words. He is blunt, and conducts him self in a slightly vulgar and grotesque manner. Yet he also seems rhetorically ironic in a reassuring sort of away. If I for second thought he actually believed his egotistical bullshit, I'd be put off; but he puts on a hyperbolic facade to mock those in the electro/progressive/hip hop scene that take themselves too seriously. Just to make sure no one mistook him for the persona he intimidated, he made sure you know how ridiculous the names of the group's songs were. “Patrick Bateman”, “Black Gretzky”- “Death Star”? More like Super Death Star. At the end of the set Pete demands that we download his album- for free! No one callously attempting to live the gangster Gordon Gekko life would issue such a proclamation.
If this all seems needlessly besides the point, I suppose the point is it made me comfortable liking Hot Sex and High Finance- and I liked them quite a bit. Pop Pete turns a phrase at velocity I wouldn't have initially predicted. He intuitively blends standard hip hop markers, with prideful geek culture references. This is by no means new in the community or among his contemporaries but here its packaged and presented in an amusingly crass, bullying, and arrogant manner. SKRYPT- his producer and sound engineer has a good ear for rhythm and musical intertextual sampling. There was a little 80s new wave and mid 90s rave cuts spliced into the beats. I think I heard some Human League, and even some stuff that reminded me of Culture Club. They don't rely on it for any kind of helpful contextualization or recognition; merely fun little references. Disparate though they may have been SKRYPT's sound and Pete's verbosity blended surprisingly well together. They were exactly what an opening band needed to be. Fairly short, high energy, with minimal set up or take down. A drastic change from the mind numbingly dull Billygoat that made me endure almost 90 minutes of converting their set up into Little Dragon's and had me ready for bed before they were even done. On to the main event.
Das Racist rolled on stage about 20 minutes after Hot Sex and High Finance concluded their set. Stumbled onto stage? Sauntered? I'm not sure. It's perfectly reasonable they were squinting so much due to what seemed like uncharacteristically bright lights. I'm not saying they were stoned when they got on stage; I'm just saying they were probably stoned. It didn't seem problematic, it's not like they had any instruments to play or hand eye coordination to admirably execute. Victor Vazquez managed to avoid spilling his drink- either ice tea, a manhattan, or a shit load of whiskey- on the front rows, for which I am grateful. The large one, Himanshu seemed content to just pretend his mike was a really tiny bass. They managed to stay upright, what more do you want?
Aside from a few bass heavy and grizzled tracks, Das Racist doesn't really rely on melody or instrumentation in their music; instead they happily depend on whatever templates a mac book and drum machine can churn out. None of it sounded bad, all of it was perfectly adequate- it's just that live music really isn't what you go to see at a Das Racist show- yet still you want an engaging performance. To fill this void Himanshu (Heems), Victor (Kool A.D.), and Ashok (Dap) had to take it up more than just a few notches. Thankfully they did, and I instantly moved passed the gapping void that the lack of instruments created. As if there was some invisible playground, the trio bounced and hopped back and forth, up and down, on and around each other with an almost ferocious jubilance. They managed to achieve a pretty good rhythm and order as every time one of the group's momentum slowed, another's would pick up. The played off and reacted to each other in a highly improvisational and theatrical role. The stage at Fortune being as small and close to the ground as it was (not even up to my hips) made for a lot of fun audience interaction. At one point Victor took a girl's glasses and gave her his. He was crooning and she was swooning. Considering how atypical their demeanour, dynamics and group aesthetic were, it was pretty entertaining seeing them entertain their own inner Barry Manilow or whoever. Hype man Ashok (I'm not sure how being a hype man is differentiated from just being a rapper in within the group, especially insofar as performances are concerned, yet that is his official designation) was particularly entertaining; that man is our generation's Steve Urquel. I realize Urquel was African and Ashok is of Persian decent; the divergence ends there. He looks like him, moves in a similarly goofy and exaggerated manner- the glasses are even the same.
If narcotics slow and dull ones cognitive and communicative abilities, either they were on the level or completely desensitized to its more consequential effects. In other words, the boys from Das Racist were spiting out phrases at blinding speeds. Nearly excessively so, their verbosity was almost palpable. At times the three layered completely different phrases on top of each other, staking them into a dense collage of allusions, rhymes, non sequeters, and at times just nonsense. But through careful tuning and practice, it can't just be random luck, the lyrics didn't get tangled into a cluttered mess. You can't precisely discern one single line and the specifics of its delivery from another, this wasn't a pinpoint liner presentation allowing your attention to be uniquely focused. Rather you have to absorb the whole experience at once with all of your body, not just your ears and intellect; like some kind of musical osmosis. From certain perspectives, this diminishes the experience, but in other ways makes it bizarrely enjoyable. It's as if your senses don't know what it is they are interpreting, but that doesn't stop you from enjoying it. Their lyrics and they way the perform them are so amorphous and ubiquitous that they all sort of blended together, which I was less enthused about. I couldn't so much as identify songs they were playing as specific parts of songs that are sprinkled throughout their albums. This could have been somewhat alleviated had they played either of my two favourite Das Racist tracks, “All Tan Everything” or “Sit Down Man”; they performed neither. I was however placated by their seemingly spontaneous tirade against hockey. “Hockey is not an interesting sport to watch!” they demanded we repeat. Nearly everyone did so adamantly. “Hockey is a white supremacist conspiracy!” They chanted. We all cheered and chanted back. Even if most of the crowd was playing along for fun, it was probably the only time you'll see a group from Vancouver decrying the nation's favoured sport. I loved it.
I was a little surprised and a touch maligned by the lighting. By which I mean, there wasn't much. I know first had that the modest collection of equipment at Fortune can put on a pretty gnarly light show. The didn't seem to implement it. Rather they were content with a set of bright white spot lights with their penetrating gaze set lazily upon the stage for the majority of the proceedings. The occasional spurt of red flared up and died out (I don't know why it shows up in my pictures so much, but I'm no photographer). A little variation, colours, intensity, strobing, would have been an appreciated touch. It didn't ruin the experience, everyone had a great time, it just seems like a strange omission. That and what other quibbles I may have had aside, Das Racist- the name is derived not from the german, “the racist” as some often say, rather a linguistic approximation of what it sounds like when people sluringly say “that's racist!”- put on a great show. They are relentlessly fun to watch. Their blend of juvenile delinquency and lyrics that are bizarrely goofy and full sharp wit and rhetoric make for a nice change of pace to the shows I'm usually at.
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