swayzak

Last night, my friend Lori and I went to the Canal Room to see Swayzak and Matthew Dear perform.

Matthew Dear did a short warm up DJ set for the room as it filled.

Swayzak was interesting; I had never seen them before. The group is two dudes, but four guys came out on stage. One guy had essentially half an electric drum set that was wired through the mixers onstage so guy #2 could control the sound of the guy drumming. Guy #2 was working the knobs of a couple sound machines (couldn’t get behind him to see exactly what they were). Guy #3 was at the laptop, which seemed to be the core of the whole show. He didn’t do all the songs, but the last guy sang over the music, but hard as we might couldn’t hear a single word or even tell what language it was — I had mistakenly thought the group was German; nope, British.

No idea what time it was, but Matthew Dear came back on and did a completely great DJ set for the folks that stayed. The first time I saw him he did a live set of his own material, the second time (which I blogged my disappointment for) he was singing live, and last night spinning other people’s music. One thing I’d like to note about my previous review of the vocal show is that the CD that roughly corresponds to that style is very good and I wholeheartedly recommend it, I just didn’t enjoy it live.

I loved too this move of Lori’s. She walks up to the ubiquitous table full of tee shirts and CDs, picks up a CD out of the six or so laid out to investigate. The kid working it asks which CD she wants and she says something like “yeah, ok, I’ll take them.” Saleskid: huh? Lori: “yeah, one of each.” The guy was flummoxed, he must have thought he was the best salesman ever.

Now playing: Swayzak – Make Up Your Mind