Thursday, March 4, 2010
Audio Alchemy: Dan the Automator is Yoshi’s Catalyst
Bay Area Bands / Local Show Reviews David MacFadden — Thu, Mar 4, 2010 at 10:59 AM
Crushed near the front of a crowd of hundreds of patrons at Yoshi’s Friday night, I had a good view of the bewildered jazz fans spilling out of the Chris Berry set: Where did this crowd come from? Why were they trying to start a wave?
Well, after enjoying ourselves in Yoshi’s lounge, watching DJ Shortkut mix together old-school music videos from EPMD and the likes, we were told that Q-Bert would be performing in 3-D on Yoshi’s main stage; this caused a veritable stampede and we ended up packed like sardines for over an hour. It didn’t matter. Q-Bert was going to be in 3-D.
Dan the Automator (producer of classics like Deltron 3030 and Dr. Octagon) curated and emceed the evening. “This is the first time a DJ has been in a 3-D fishbowl,” he told us, as a screen was set up behind Q-Bert. He explained that Q-Bert wanted a fifty-foot screen, but could only find a fifty-inch screen at Wal-Mart.
The fifty-foot screen would have better served the large crowd, but the concept was cool: With tropical fish swimming 3-D laps behind him (not to mention Mars-1 painting a black canvas with swaths of sky blue, stage left), Q-Bert got down to business. Now, this is, in Dan’s well-received words, “the greatest scratch DJ of all time,” a DJ who took scratching to its logical extreme ten years ago. So it’s fair to wonder if he has anything new to offer.
He does.
Q-Bert’s set began with tweaked, glitchy ambient beats. One song rumbled along with the low-end buzz of rubberband sirens; another beat was composed of metallic clicks, like a drunk fiddling with a ring of keys and a stubborn lock. For about twenty minutes, scratches were looped and piled. Hopefully this is the beginning of something new.
Dan hinted that he and Q-Bert are collaborating again. Their pairing on Kool Keith’s Dr. Octagon album remains one of the touchstones of late-‘90s indie hip-hop production, so this is great news. What’s next? Well, keep popping into Yoshi’s for this bi-monthly party and you might find out.
Next show: Dan the Automator introduces a new project on March 13.
Comments (2)
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Thanks for the comment, Skatebone. The throw down with Jazz Mafia was fine, but it rehashed lots of old-school tracks that we've heard a million times. It was fun to see them do "Rockit" together, but that dynamic has been around since the mid 80s. Q's solo set was more interesting, so that was my focus.
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