On Jun 24, 2004, at 4:23 AM, Glenn McClements wrote:
Conversely Plaid were on just before and looked utterly bored behind their laptops, which was a pretty dull experience for everyone, even though they had fantastic visuals.
I think that visuals is part of the solution. The music needs to be knockout-good (of course), but then in addition i think it bodes well for these performers to take their own visuals seriously (or contract with artists to do amazing ones for you). I mean if you are in a large club, in the back, all you can see is 1 or 2 heads bobbing over a lighted laptop screen, it's certainly not as interesting or inspiring as a giant screen with cool visual interpretations of the music on it.
Looking at the performers gets old anyway, whether it's a vinyl DJ or laptop DJ... I've always appreciated the visuals at a Plaid show on a gigantic screen behind them. They did something cool once with robot controlled cameras that panned and intersected across the mixing board they were using.. that was kind of cool too. It was a way to give the audience a feel for what they were doing (Ok, it was just knob twisting, but hey that's techno ;) ... but in a really big/rich visual way.
I'm intrigued that Mills is mixing videos of old dance music into his shows, I'd like to see that sometime.
Then again there's something awesome and sort of magic about a crude black warehouse, no "party" lights, no visuals, gigantic sound system, and a dj crouched in the corner making dancers go wild. I guess non-visuals is fun too.. if the party is raw production.
peace -- Matt MacQueen http://SonicSunset.com
