Natas was visiting A/K, and so I cruised downtown with him to catch Shapeshifter. He was well keen. We arrived just in time to catch the end of Greg Churchill's set. He's a very good House DJ, he really had the crowd jumping. Why not? The council had made it free again, as part of their ongoing Dancing in the Streets campaign.
We braved the cue in a conveniance store to get some water, and came out as the MC was introducing Shapeshifter. We moved into the crowd, waited a few songs and then moved a little deeper, and eventually found ourselves in a gap, centrestage, where we got down to dancing. I was looking around, at all the building surrounding the square, and I suddenly got really paranoid of snipers on the rooftops: I keep thinking at the oddest moments that it's suddenly gonna be the start of the New World Order. I also noticed that you can only see about 11 stars in the sky when you're downtown: that's just shitty.
Shapeshifter were very good, playing as a four-piece live Drum'n'Bass combo. A drummer, and three guys twiddling nobs and playing synths; one who occasionally played guitar, and one who spent most of the first half of the show playing saxophone.
They played well to the crowd (the figure we were given was 4500 people), dropping in lots of sax breaks. It was kinda pop and derivative, covering lots of different variations in jazzy Drum'n'Bass, but the crowd was lapping it up. And these guys were obviously skilled musicians, as they kept up their pace, building up at the end with an MC going bananas, lots of rave-synth breaks, and a fat bass sound. Of course I was thinking that I would have chosen to turn the nobs just a little bit further and make a noise, but these guys knew their audience and were aiming for a popular sound, so I can see why they didn't.
Appearantly the album is nothing on their live show, so maybe see them if they're in your town.
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5 years ago
