Welcome to the
VileArts’ Live blogging session for The
New Projects Weekend. Co-conspirator Eric Karoulla will be over on his
blog, sharing his experiences from a day of wild music and perfomance action.
We are side-by-side in
the basement of Nice’n’Sleazy and there’s the first act: plenty of strobe
action from Princess NRG. It might be one man and his laptop, but I am heading
to epilepsy through the light show.
Nice used of washes
here – not too heavy and not too melodic, but certainly emotive and forceful.
It has that sweet isolationist quality: music not too fussed whether it
explains itself. But now he’s breaking up into a drum versus sampled vocal
battle.
He’s got a microphone
and the voice is rattling right through me. The drum sample is very metal, the
voice is almost jazzy, maybe r’n’b. Maybe Eric’s got something on it – he’s the
one with the knowledge of languages.
Princess NRG has got
what appears to be a massive fluorescent bong next to his laptop. The impact of
the strobe is starting to wear off now. The sound of scraping metal he’s just
unleashed takes us into darker, raw territory. “It’s just a loud of bloody
noise,” and considerably less interesting than the previous mash-up.
Ah. The computer just
shut down, and he’s had to start again. It’s difficult to tell, but I think
that he’s just realigning the samples…
Bulgarian voice choir:
very topical. And now a more jittering beat arrives with orchestral wash.
Princess NRG is picking up on the eclectic potential of the sample, showing
little respect for sources but emphasising the juxtaposition of different
geographies. That’s a fairly eastern groove he’s dropping now.
For first up on a
Saturday afternoon, the boy is doing well. There is a consistency to his sound:
the volume makes it aggressive despite the pop sensibility and the judicious
use of samples. He’s letting the bit play itself out, rotating the variations
of the melody over a rhythm that wouldn’t shame a bhangra banger. I’d argue
that this isn’t the perfect time and place: it’s disco music from a scene in Bladerunner. Harsh, almost militaristic
and diverse: he holds the beat long enough to make this dance music, but rough
enough to be evocative.
The fact that Eric and
I sitting in the corner typing is probably as much of a show as the performance
isn’t wasted on me.
Let’s see how Eric is
getting on…
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