When the opening band is impressive, and each following performance adds on to that feeling, it’s a damn good show. And last night at the Rickshaw Stop was one of those shows.
This installment of the 20th anniversary of the Noise Pop festival was co-headlined by Grimes and oOoOO (pronounced “oh”) and featured Born Gold and Yalls. The night’s theme seemed to be hypnotic and bouncy beats, and there were plenty to sway to.
Yalls: This one man project based out of Berkeley is capable of creating a world of sound all by his lonesome. But he doesn’t leave you out: instead the room is absorbed into quiver of synths and samplers. Vocals are there, but he lets his music do the talking. Fans of Neon Indian and/or Flying Lotus should find Yalls quite nice.
Born Gold: With an iPad taped to a mic stand, and a leather jacket with a sampler attached to it, it was easy to know things were going to get weird in the best way possible. But it wasn’t until the lights of the Rickshaw went off, and the singer’s leather jacket lit up in a whirl of white lights, that things got awesome.
And then there was the home made sampler guitar, which one the keyboardists decided to wield around while in the crowd wearing stilts. It’d be easy to write off as a nerdy charade — which the amount of circuit boards inside the jacket proved it is — but their music is even grander than the performance.
oOoOO: This San Francisco based producer may be proof of instant teleportation. Switching between drudgy, slumpy beats, to trap-style hip hop, to complex rhythms, this guy can ratchet the hipsters . His set-up is simple, and there are no flashy lights, just a reel of black and white footage playing in the background.
oOoOO, real name Christopher Dexter Greenspan, left stage with just a quick salute, but came back to throw out of a bouquet of flowers as a thanks.
Grimes: It may sound like a great name for a punk band, but Grimes, (aka Claire Boucher) is a petite blonde woman from Montreal. The heavy bass, expansive beats and cute vocals make this a great blend of goth and pop, which is perfectly trendy for the moment, but it also reeks of authenticity.
Her fellow Canadians of Born Gold came to join her for a few songs mid set until she gave thanks to the crowd and went solo into “Nightmusic.”
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