1200 Techniques.



Okay – let’s break this down:



· 1200 Techniques played 12 songs. Assuming that they used their full range of techniques, that’s 100 techniques per song.



· There were four people on stage, so that’s 25 techniques each per song.



· The songs ran for an average of five minutes. That makes five techniques per minute.



· In a nutshell, playing live, each member of the group performs a new technique every 12 seconds!



High rotation on Triple J, effusive reviews of their debut CD and a recent tour supporting the explosive Sonic Animation set the scene for 1200 Techniques National Tour that swept through Sydney last Friday night on its way to Brisbane and their final destination – Byron Bay. Supported by East Coast rapper Princess Superstar, 1200 Techniques gave a polished, high energy performance that looked like the work of an outfit with much more experience than five years but also like the work of a group who are still growing.



Princess Superstar came onstage at 10 dressed in a weird gothic black unitard thing with a hood that covered her head. One of my friends has been a big fan of Princess Superstar since he downloaded Bad Baby-sitter from the web and was very insistent that we should get to the Metro to catch the start of her set. Supported by a DJ only, with minimal lighting effects and audio that wasn’t really doing justice to her smart, sassy lyrics I don’t feel we were seeing Princess Superstar at her best. There was nothing wrong with her performance – except perhaps the bit where she flashed a breast at us (why?), there just wasn’t anything very captivating about it either. Really, to get your money’s worth with Princess Superstar you need to be able to hear her lyrics, so you can get into her mischievous narratives, e.g.:



“I assume your folks are gonna be out late…I’m a sit on the couch and masturbate / Well if you don’t like it I can leave and then you’ll be alone believe me that’s what the creepy monsters want / I’m a bad babysitter, got my boyfriend in your shower, Woo! I’m makin 6 bucks an hour”



The crowd swelled as 11:30 and the start of 1200 Techniques’ set approached. A little after that time the lights dimmed, the crowd cheered and the sound of drumsticks hitting cowbells and Nfamas’s funky silver maraca-thing could be heard around the theatre, though no one was yet onstage. Soon Nfamas and DJ Peril emerged from the crowd and made their way up to the front. Kemstar joined them and added his guitar funk riff to the track and 12 seconds later Nfamas grabbed the mic, put down his maraca thing and burst into rhyme.



As with their album, 1200 Techniques’ live show traverses all the territory from hard bass driven hip-hop to darker guitar thrash rock. They have been likened to everyone from the Beastie Boys to the Chemical Brothers and have been declared to be a cutting-edge fusion of electronic, rap and rock. They are good, no question, but are they the revolutionary force they have been declared to be? To the mind of this reviewer, the answer is not quite. Nfamas has a great stage presence (presumably partially based on his dalliance with acting/extraing – apparently he is the genie in the Tim Tam ad), but he doesn’t have a unique lyrical sound as do, say, the boys from Jurassic 5, or Trench from Naughty by Nature or Sticky Fingaz from Onyx or the Method Man from the Wu Tang Clan to name but a few. Nor does he rap with as much meaning or force as Public Enemy or Michael Franti. Nevertheless he is a strong front man and is assisted ably by the mop-topped Kemstar and the multi-talented DJ Peril, who plays bongos, scratches records and carries supporting vocals. Much of each track is still laid down on a sequencer though, rather than performed live – not too much of a problem, but not ideal.



While they are doing a top job I feel as though we are experiencing a rough draft of what 1200 Techniques will become. Just as the Beastie Boys’ earlier material is less sophisticated than what they produced on Ill Communication and to a lesser extent Hello Nasty, so too, I believe, the current incarnation of 1200 Techniques is a developmental phase which will precede some seriously excellent shit.



The crowd loved it though and the whole Metro Theatre, not just the people up the front, put their hands in the air and bounced. If I am right, and 1200 Techniques are a work in progress, the band they will become is going to be huge.