The better of the 2 shows i saw this past weekend. Sole and the Skyrider band is an intense show. The funny part of that was i was one of maybe 25 people at the venue. Combating the 7th game of the Red Sox -Tampa series in boston was possibly a little to blame, other factors most likely include the relatively selective community who enjoys Sole’s style and the Skyrider band.
Both openers were local Massachusetts performers. Scroll was once a rapper but performed with Shortrock who is a dj. Scroll mashed up some of his songs on an mpc1000 while shortrock scratched up some samples and displayed a good example of turntablism
Sole and the skyrider band includes:
Sole using vocals and some EA machines infrequently
A live drummer with full set
A second percussionist who also uses a mpc
A electric guitar/violin/mandolin player who uses a keyboard and EA equipment.
Sole performing an older song “plutonium” off the “Selling Live Water” album (pre-skyrider days) with the skyrider band in hollywood @ the knitting factory
Scroll was probably one of my favorite openers ive seen in a long time. One of my favorite things to see live is a producer and dj working together. One of my favorite examples was seeing Dj Signify and Blockhead do live remixes of songs at a show. Scroll isnt well known enough to have youtube videos but his myspace (www.myspace.com/scrollmpc) has a few of his songs and a video of him making one which is fun to watch.
The other show i saw was Atmosphere’s Paint the Nation tour at “The Station” in Portland, on Friday night. It was enjoyable alot larger of a venue and crowd. Atmosphere being a lot more popular had a larger following obviously.
The Atmosphere performance was well done, had a female vocalist with him to do most of the samples he usually uses in his music
Currently listening to: Scroll- Singing Songs from Nowhere
