Tigerbeat6 Instant Weight Loss Program

Given my trip to Philly last weekend and then my Bizarro World illness on Monday, I’d been taking it easy exercise-wise since last Saturday, i.e. no gym. I’d also been eating out a lot (the restaurant kind...), so I’d managed to put back on some of the pounds I’d lost recently.

Enter Tigerbeat6’s Paws Across America Tour, starring Eats Tapes, Knifehandchop, and Kid 606. I took in the show last night at Northsix in beautiful (insert dripping sarcasm here) Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

Man, am I tired and sore. But also about 300 pounds lighter.

The show was scheduled to start at 9PM, but didn’t get rolling until about 9:45. The duo that is Eats Tapes took the stage with what appeared to be some primitive drum machines (a Roland 707 and 909, I believe) and some marvelously circuit-bent machines, including what looked like an old portable tape player. After a few initial bleeps and squiggles, the beat dropped and the Four was On The Floor in a BIG way. Now, I’d planned to take it easy so I’d have plenty left for Kid 606, but I simply could not resist the siren call of happy feet. I was up and hopping about after about a song and a half.

Eats Tapes stuff is medium tempo for the most part, so I wasn’t pushing really hard, but I worked up a sweat and had a smile on my face when Derek arrived near the end of the set. We did some catching up and turned our attention to the front when Knifehandchop started up.

I’ve always been a fan of KHC because he is completely all over the place. He was in great form last night, starting out with a really downtempo piece that had Derek and me headnodding in a serious fashion. However, downtempo morphed into reggae-esque, reggae-esque morphed into ragga, ragga warped into drum and bass, and finally drum and bass exploded into hardcore. Knifehandchop covered a myriad of electronic genres over the course of his 45 minute set, with me flailing away pretty much constantly. At this point, the shirt was off and I was drenched, deliriously lost in the pounding rhythms, rumbling bass, and ricocheting synth melodies.

Who needs drugs when you’ve got this stuff?

The Chop finally signed off, leaving me completely exhausted but anxiously awaiting the arrival of Kid 606. Bianca and Nellie arrived just as he started.

Now, Derek, Bianca, and I caught the Kid at Rothko back in February, so I had some concept of what was about to occur.

Or so I thought.

I have to say that the Rothko show was amazing. The crowd was completely jacked and the music was slamming. Lots of breakcore and sampledelic stuff. Not a lot of room to dance, but I made due.

Last night was a completely different story.

At first the crowd didn’t seem into it. I guess it was partly because it was a Wednesday night (in my experience, midweek crowds tend to be mellow) and partly because a lot of people in "the scene" frown on dancing; lots of pretentious folk who prefer to sit back and observe.

They’re nuts. Because what was Kid 606’s plan for the evening?

Death by acid.

After some incredible high pitched static bursts and glitches, he got to work. In came the beats and bass and then some of my favorite sounds in the world. I peered up on stage and there it was: everybody’s favorite little silver box, the Roland 303. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the 303, suffice to say that this machine is the backbone of most nineties trance and techno. It generates those squelchy, squirrelly synth lines you always hear. Anyway, the Kid was laying them down THICK.

The set itself is now a complete blur, as I basically only stopped moving to take on some water every now and again. While there was an acid theme to the majority of the tunes, Kid 606 did vary stuff enough so that it didn’t get boring. There were forays into hardcore, drum and bass, drill and bass, downtempo, neo-dub, and a host of other flavas. I think he played for about an hour, but it seemed longer; not long enough, though. I did not want it to end. Some of the crowd danced (at one point, an honest to goodness majority), but it never got crowded, so I got to THROW DOWN.

Did I mention how sore I am today?

Anyway, I did actually get to talk with Miguel (the madman behind Kid 606) once the audio storm was over. He and Derek and I had a brief chat about the show and what was to be his upcoming show on Friday, which unfortunately got cancelled. After Miguel went back to break down his stuff, Derek commented that one of the things he liked about the indie scene was that you could just strike up a conversation with the artists. I agreed completely. No 10 foot tall, head-neck optional bodyguards to deal with, very little pretension, and a shared appreciation of the music.

So I limped out of Northsix at about 12:45am this morning and stumbled my way back to Bedford Avenue to catch a cab. Almost snagged one on the first try, but got upstreamed by yet another New Yorker with no appreciation for taxi etiquette.

BTW, to the lady who upstreamed me: despite the apology, you’re still a bitch. If you’d really been sorry, you’d have given up the cab. And as for the cab driver who picked her up instead of me? I would have tipped better.

Who gwan test mi wan I and I got deez tunes?:

Knifehandchop - Rockstopper
(blistering beats and bitchslapping bass)

Kid 606 - Resilience
(new and surprisingly laid back)

Mortician - Hacked Up For Barbeque/Zombie Apocalypse
(the only kind of metal you can write when your drum machine is stuck at 250BPM)

Arvo Part - Passio
(68 minutes of monochromatic beauty topped off with 4 minutes of audio sunrise)

Gustav Holtz - The Planets
(epic orchestral; too bad he only knew about 7 of them)