RJD2 wsg Adam Dietch’s Break Science at The Magic Stick, Detroit, Mi

“That’s what I love about Detroit. You don’t care if it’s electro, hip-hop, funk or rock. You just want to get down.” RJD2 said following his set at The Magic Stick in Detroit, last week.
RJD2, Ramble John "RJ" Krohn, has built quite a unique following. His music has found multiple niches in snowboarding feature films, in the live music scene playing opening sets for Umphrey’s McGee and The Disco Biscuits and with hip-hop emcees. After more than a decade, he now has own label and with all his collaborations and mixes has more than 15 albums and EP’s. Playing live as both a more traditional DJ and a full band, his live shows bring out the diversity and the breadth of his musical palette. He came to Detroit, the self-proclaimed birthplace of techno, and it was a sweaty sold out dance party in Motown on a Friday night.
Opening the evening was New York’s Break Science featuring drummer Adam Dietch and keyboard player Borahm Lee. Dietch and Lee’s resumes read like a who’s who of recent stars in hip-hop and pop-art. Break Science earned a solid foothold in Michigan with brain-melting late night set at Rothbury’s Tripolee Dome last year and they would provide a raucous opening set for the sold out crowd. Their set started with a bit of Lee Scratch Perry, but ran the gamut all over jazz, psychedelia, techno and onto hip-hop with homage to one Detroit’s greatest producers, the late J-Dilla. Break Science toyed around playing “Lightworks” and a few other nuggets from Dilla’s Donuts to rile the Detroit crowd with a hometown hero. Lee and Dietch lock in perfectly as Dietch’s schizophrenic drum changing is matched by Lee’s arsenal of keyboard abilities. Break Science is definitely hard to pin down, but that makes them all the more interesting as they sonically roll around inside your head.
RJD2 then took the stage to the now feisty crowd as “Commissioner Crotchbuttons.” A bejeweled jumpsuit completely with a crotch mounted wireless pad. See him explain it here. RJD2 channeled his inner MacGyver as he slapped an old Lazy Susan together with an MPC, (Music/Midi Production Center) and attached them both at his crotch of the wireless suit. RJ gets all Daft Punk on everybody’s ass, as a robotic voice in his welding mask echoes to froth the packed crowd before jumping back to his turntable set ups to start the show.
The whole night would transition from RJD2 in his “Commissioner” suit to his more traditional DJ set up with a mix with his four piece live band with drummer Sam Brown, and multi-instrumentalists Derek Dicenzo and Happy Chincester. Sometimes he would be behind the turntables with one or two of his band mates, sometimes alone. He wouldn’t stay in one place for too long as he bounced grinning ear to ear from his electric guitar, to bass and back to his turntable set up as he blended music from across his mounting catalogue including his recently re-released first album, Your Face or Your Kneecaps, a soulful trip through vintage funk, and his latest The Colossus.
RJD2 takes his varied material, funk, jazz, hip-hop, electronic and all in between, and slashes it apart to rebuild it live. Production laden DJ numbers are changed and thrown to full band instrumentation, and vice versa, for a motley and unrestrained take on his material.
The closing medley provides a glimpse into the night as loud thunderous builds came from older production heavy songs like “The Horror>Ghostwriter,” are then balanced by calmer material from the full band with three part harmonies. The sirens and samples crashing through “The Horror” are soon bottomed out, as RJ slides from behind the turntables and a soft acoustic guitar strum from Chinchester starts “Ghostwriter.” The full band slowly builds to a slamming climax horn section with the return to “Ghostwriter” as RJ, dressed in his Commissioner Crotchbutton’s attire, crashes through the ending of the song.
The slow crawl of the encore “Making Days Longer” slowed things down for a bit but soon RJ brought things to a thrashing close with a wide-eyed grin as he ripped his final guitar solo. The wavy ups and downs of the evening were also mirrored on a movie screen onstage speckled with various eye candy for the crowd to enjoy.
RJD2 is on tour supporting The Colossus, and is well worth heading to check out, with most shows under $20, including smoking openers Break Science for the next two Midwest shows before heading to Colorado and out west. Break Science will also be touring with throughout the south with The Pnuma Trio.

by Pietro C. Truba

click to enlarge or view the SLIDESHOW HERE...

Bela Fleck: The Africa Project

Bela Fleck: The Africa Project

Feat. Bassekou Kouyate & Ngoni Ba, Anania Ngolgia & John Kitime

The Hill Auditorium, Ann Arbor, Mi

As Malian ngoni player Bassekou Kouyate said simply, “Bela play American banjo…I play African banjo.” As Bela Fleck started the first of two sets of his Africa Project tour, with some solo material, he took the stage alone, with his weapon of choice, the banjo. The entire, two-set, roughly two hour show was fueled with flavorings from Bela’s trips through Africa playing with, among others, players of the Ngoni, an African ancestor of the banjo.

The Africa Project which Bela started during time off from The Flecktones in 2004, has since given birth to Grammy award winning album Throw Down Your Heart and an award winning documentary (of the same name) chronicling the trip in which Bela visited a slew of different African and Malian locations. However, joining Bela on stage were just a small sampling of the artists, as two groups for joined Bela for the 33-city run of college towns in support of the release of more tracks from the project. Anania Ngoglia and John Kitime took the stage as Bela left them for two solo songs. Ngoglia, a mult-instrumentalist from Tanzania would play the Wagogo thumb piano, or ilimba for the evening. Kitime, also from Tanzania, played acoustic guitar, and also is one of the film’s producers.
Bela would then join Ngoglia and Kitime for two songs, one of which was speckled with chicken noises from Ngoglia to resemble his girlfriend, who Bela comically said “…Apparently she sometimes she sounds like a chicken. Sometimes she does not.” Bela and Ngoglia would duel back and forth as Ngoglia left Bela grinning ear to ear as they played back and forth at each other.

Taking the stage next to replace the trio would be an ensemble of Malian musicians, Bassekou Kouyate and Ngoni Ba (The Big Ngoni.) Bassekou was joined by seven other musicians, including three other ngoni players, Fousseyni Kouyate on ngoni ba, Barou Kouyate on ngoni and Moussa Bah on bass ngoni. Also Ngoni Ba were Malian vocalists Amy Sacko and Ma Soumano, as well as percussionists Alou Coulibaly and Moussa Sissoko. Bela looked back at the percussive drum that looked, in his words, like a very big bald man’s head poking up in the air. The drum looked like a globe and was played like a djembe, or any hand drum, as knuckles and palms created different beats and raps on the hard shell. The eight piece group would take the stage alone led by Bassekou who would provide a most charismatic front man. Bassekou’s fingers flew across the tiny fretboard of the ngoni as he either horsed down on a wah pedal to give the ngoni a quick jolt, or was at the stage front propping his foot on an amp leading the band. Bela would join as the two would recount stories of Bela’s travels to Africa and battle a few multi-lingual hecklers before playing one more song before a short intermission.
The second set would feature a slew of combinations of the musicians on stage in an hour of stellar, tag-team wrestling style musical creation. Bela would lead the different groups through the myriad of styles, blending the banjo in seamlessly with the two different regions of African music, which for lack of a better expression, created one extremely unique and entertaining experience. The second set and encore also featured fiddle player Casey Driessen, from Bela’s Sparrow Quartet. With the addition of Dreissen, the trios, quartets, octets, howevermanytets rotated on and off stage creating diverse combinations of players feeding off one an other. All twelve musicians finally were on stage for the final song of the set and the encore of the Grammy award winning title track of the project “Throw Down Your Heart.”

The surprisingly long show, just over two hours, was fueled by lots of improvisation and on the fly setlist creation, all with the ever changing musical chairs setup that led to some incendiary musical moments. This tour is a great glimpse into Bela’s ambitious project and the subsequent melding of world music into his playing style, all well worth the price of admission. Show dates are on Bela Fleck’s website www.belafleck.com and screening dates on www.throwdownyourheart.com. 

click to enlarge or view the SLIDESHOW HERE...

















by Pietro C. Truba
originally for Relix.com