It starts like any other night in the United Republic of Drum and Bass. A little de ja vu-ish. Still it’s early yet and the warm-up DJs, Shuey and Ludo, need a chance to make the crowd (collectively) and the night (abstractly) anything but frosty.
A glum, rainy evening casts its pallid pall over proceeding, encouraging assonance in conjunction with the token heavy bass screw face head bopping. It’s almost enough to make me go off on a William S. Burroughs riff where I’d mention a woman who didn’t live up to her mothers rather eerie expectations. But I won’t.
A little after eleven Killa Kela takes over with his posse of MC Trip and DJ Skeletrik, and mark my words: What the Hell! (In the good way.) Kela was seriously good, but first props to Trip for the line “MCs step to me, they get stung like Steve Irwin”. In fact it was all so good I could ignore the incongruity of sticking a hip hop act in the middle of a drum and bass night.
Imagine Dick Van Dyke doing his one man band thing in Mary Poppins. Make him younger. Make him hip. Give him some bling and a some patented ‘youf’ vibe. Make him love hip hop. Then take away all his instruments and sit back. Killa Kela has the ability to drop a bassline, drum beat, high hats AND sing… all at the same time. His virtuoso performance had mouths hanging open, heads shaking in disbelief and minds blown (literally, although that may have also just been the smoke machine). I’d say GO BUY HIS CD NOW but I don’t know if you could truly appreciate what you’re hearing unless you also saw him on stage, alone, doing it all himself.
MC Trip did his London style shouty rap thing, a random raga sort chipped in sporadically and before you knew it, it was all over, a worthy and delirious introduction to Goldie and MC Lowqui. Goldie, as you may well know, has been around for a while. He made his name with Timeless and has since been the man behind the Metalheadz label and mix CDs. All of which means you know what to expect from him if you like drum and bass. Which I do.
However, opinions are often split on Goldie. The music he plays is, arguably, something akin to the middle-of-the-road rock of the D&B world. He drops a few heavy tracks, a few lyric heavy numbers and, teasingly, some jungle drums, but too much of his records seem to be this slushy, trance-like treble bass and simplistic drops. I’m from the heavy, hard and fast school of D&B, something the warm-ups did admirably, and frankly, for me, Goldie just didn’t cut the mustard.
MC Lowqui was okay, not great (low key right?), but after the pyrotechnics of the opening act it was all a little flat. But then I didn’t expect much more than that. So I wasn’t disappointed, I just got down to dancing and sneezing (I had a cold) which, incidentally, can be incorporated into some pretty sick body popping dance moves if well styled.
