Review // Sounds Of The Near Future @ WHP
Sounds Of The Near Future has had an enlightening, arousing roll-out as the latest collaboration between promotional messiahs Now Wave and the team behind the Warehouse Project, fetching crisp names in bass and house such as Henry Krinkle and Snakehips, to the city earlier this Summer. For their latest collaboration this season, Brainfeeder chief Flying Lotus made his welcome return to Old Trafford, bringing a significantly exciting chunk of his roster along for the ride with recurrent residents, making clear that the most puzzling dilemma of the night would appear in a puerile attempt to try and cram every desirable artist, into an achievable itinerary. With the double J’s of Jon K and Jonny Dub opening up Rooms one and two respectively, the latter jockey seemed the most logical point of call to cement ground, ahead of a prospective dense six hours. Walking into a consolidation of classic 90s Snoop mixed into Alicia Myers disco favourite ‘I Want To Thankyou’, a praise-worthy cocktail was granted to fortify the foundations ahead of Brainfeeder’s only UK signee, Lapalux, stepping up.
Stuart Howard’s live sets under his Lapa identity are always an experimentation to behold, adapting and evolving from performance to performance by incorporating a spectrum of R&B bootlegs and neoteric strategies, yet it was the technicalities on WHP’s part that were noticeably absent. Planting a strikingly impressive producer into a corner with minimal lighting and zero visual pieces, his performance already lost a spark at no fault of his own just a short while in- and where some of the most memorable parties may be discovered round the darkest corners, we must remember that this is Warehouse, where attendees want presence for their pounds and a full experience, with no corners cut. Despite the breach of optic stimuli present, Howard’s rousing extended introduction and a mind-bogglingly tremendous technique of infiltrating 2012’s ‘When You’re Gone’ with a hectic manipulation of Khia’s ‘My Neck, My Back’, not only raised the bar in an unconventional sense but also had a whole lot of eyebrows heading north, too. Bold, adventurous and downright brilliant, Lapalux managed to execute his spell with just the right amount of tongue-in-cheek satire and laudable commendation deserved.
Inbetween all the dancing and debauchery present, there is one obvious exclusion from the line-up that merch-clad hipsters in football jersey tees are close-to-weeping for; Zomby. He may be more well known for his obnoxious Twitter rants involving the lexicon of ‘Givenchy’ and ‘Cult music’, rather than his masterful earlier workings (‘With Love’ was a trap-heavy mess of fade-outs and uncalculated mechanisms), yet the fact that he was removed from the night’s bill without explanation or reason from the organisers, now appears to be another factor that comes part-and-parcel as each year rolls around, disappointingly through struggle.
With Flying Lotus’s 2012 release ‘Until The Quiet Comes’ branching away from his hip-hop enticed work of the past, the secretive (at first) conception of all-rap alias Captain Murphy, formed within it’s trailing wake of intelligent psychadelia. As an exclusive debut European live show, little is known about the project apart from the occasional Earl Sweatshirt collaboration that fanatics that have been following across the blogsphere from day one, it could be described as a blessing in disguise that this venture has managed to remained enigmatic. Providing a punk-as-fuck aesthetic as one of the most forward-thinking hip-hop assemblages emerging in years, with an addition of bass-master Thundercat on band duties, Steven Ellison spits out dynamic bars with mean flow like we never envisioned, never mind the spoken word sections that collectively, are eagerly ready to hand 2013’s rap game a clear royal flush. Between hosting a terrifying finish of cackling after every turnout, Ellison shows us that he isn’t just an electronic-orientated multitude of excellence, his hip-hop roots stemming further, deeper and more superior than we ever observed before.
Inaugurating his revolutionary 3-D projection screen show on it’s sophomore trip to Manchester, the annexation of sprouting spider webs stretching forty-odd feet and musical manipulations of atmospheric, trippy proportions, further futuristic flair is propelled into his engineering soundscape. Taking a noble step forward to perform sectional vocals up-close-and-personal to his audience, tracks from past releases ‘Los Angeles’ and ‘Cosmogramma’ are mixed into ‘Another One Bites The Dust’, Drake’s ‘Started From The Bottom’ and various TNGHT snippets, moulded with mini-city metropolis illustrations, that add an essence of surprise improvisation. Mobilising a moshpit-inducing climax of his Odd Future acquaintances’ labour, FlyLo’s final run of this particular spectacle is a reflection of how tremendously esteemed for his production, knowledge and ear-to-the-ground philosophies’ he remains, leaving us swaggering out into the wee hours, quite literally, mindblown.
Words by Yours Truly // Images by WHP (via here) X
Stuart Howard’s live sets under his Lapa identity are always an experimentation to behold, adapting and evolving from performance to performance by incorporating a spectrum of R&B bootlegs and neoteric strategies, yet it was the technicalities on WHP’s part that were noticeably absent. Planting a strikingly impressive producer into a corner with minimal lighting and zero visual pieces, his performance already lost a spark at no fault of his own just a short while in- and where some of the most memorable parties may be discovered round the darkest corners, we must remember that this is Warehouse, where attendees want presence for their pounds and a full experience, with no corners cut. Despite the breach of optic stimuli present, Howard’s rousing extended introduction and a mind-bogglingly tremendous technique of infiltrating 2012’s ‘When You’re Gone’ with a hectic manipulation of Khia’s ‘My Neck, My Back’, not only raised the bar in an unconventional sense but also had a whole lot of eyebrows heading north, too. Bold, adventurous and downright brilliant, Lapalux managed to execute his spell with just the right amount of tongue-in-cheek satire and laudable commendation deserved.
With Flying Lotus’s 2012 release ‘Until The Quiet Comes’ branching away from his hip-hop enticed work of the past, the secretive (at first) conception of all-rap alias Captain Murphy, formed within it’s trailing wake of intelligent psychadelia. As an exclusive debut European live show, little is known about the project apart from the occasional Earl Sweatshirt collaboration that fanatics that have been following across the blogsphere from day one, it could be described as a blessing in disguise that this venture has managed to remained enigmatic. Providing a punk-as-fuck aesthetic as one of the most forward-thinking hip-hop assemblages emerging in years, with an addition of bass-master Thundercat on band duties, Steven Ellison spits out dynamic bars with mean flow like we never envisioned, never mind the spoken word sections that collectively, are eagerly ready to hand 2013’s rap game a clear royal flush. Between hosting a terrifying finish of cackling after every turnout, Ellison shows us that he isn’t just an electronic-orientated multitude of excellence, his hip-hop roots stemming further, deeper and more superior than we ever observed before.
Inaugurating his revolutionary 3-D projection screen show on it’s sophomore trip to Manchester, the annexation of sprouting spider webs stretching forty-odd feet and musical manipulations of atmospheric, trippy proportions, further futuristic flair is propelled into his engineering soundscape. Taking a noble step forward to perform sectional vocals up-close-and-personal to his audience, tracks from past releases ‘Los Angeles’ and ‘Cosmogramma’ are mixed into ‘Another One Bites The Dust’, Drake’s ‘Started From The Bottom’ and various TNGHT snippets, moulded with mini-city metropolis illustrations, that add an essence of surprise improvisation. Mobilising a moshpit-inducing climax of his Odd Future acquaintances’ labour, FlyLo’s final run of this particular spectacle is a reflection of how tremendously esteemed for his production, knowledge and ear-to-the-ground philosophies’ he remains, leaving us swaggering out into the wee hours, quite literally, mindblown.
Words by Yours Truly // Images by WHP (via here) X
