Carl Craig's Tres Demented played London Express's room at the Cross Festival last night. The lineup =
2 drummers with full trap kits 1 pianist on two Korg keyboards 1 trumpet blown by Marcus Belgrave 1 conductor who sometimes played keys, triggered a few sequences, screamed in a microphone, looked moody for a while then started smiling a lot The three songs that lasted about an hour were Tres Demented, the Climax and Throw, loosely. The intro had bits that vaguely sounded like Chaz Vincent's 'Dream Zenith' synths and there was one part in the middle that sounded kinda like Landcruising. The drummers pounded the whole time w/o a break - both extremely competent and complimentary. The keyboardist was really good - he knew when to take the fore and when to accompany. Marcus Belgrave was clearly the star though, and everyone on stage seemed thrilled to be playing with him. He seemed to be having a blast too. There was relatively little electronics involved, except a looping synth and bassline, and some beats that Carl Craig tweaked a little. It still felt really thechno though! Some people asked if he did anything at all up there, but he did conduct some (as much as you can given the improvisational nature of the show), and he bitched a lot about some early sound/organisational problems. ;) They all seemed to be loving it about 1/2-way though though. Not sure where the next stop is, but I would say it's worth a hefty cover + substantial travel if it's not coming near you. Probably not everyone's cup of tea, but that room was about twice as full (and happy) as 1/2-hour later for Derrick May (mostly in loop-mode). Didn't catch a lot of other stuff. Gilles Peterson was good, not great. Idjut Boys were pretty tight. Unabombers were dope until about the last twenty minutes when I just really wanted to see Carl Craig. Brooks Live was a bit too slow to develop for the first half, but was excellent for the second. Luke Vibert did a great HDJ set as well, of which I only caught maybe 40 minutes before severe fatigue took over. In that time he pulled out YMO, LFO, Meat Beat Manifesto, the Knight Rider theme song, some acid I couldn't spot, and a bunch of other really good stuff. Boundaryless. The overall vibe was pretty good given I'd seen adverts for the festival on TV. There were definitely some sketchy people around, but on the whole it was a surprisingly good vibe. If there's a next year I will not be playing football the day before... This was probably the best weekend for music in London so far this year. Would love to hear how the 14-hour Co-op session was yesterday if anyone made it! Tristan ======= http://www.phonopsia.co.uk [EMAIL PROTECTED]
