Saul Williams loses his feathers, but not his wings in Chicago
April 18, 2008, at Martyrs'
By Sheba White
Published: April 20th, 2008 | 8:35pm
Suppose math rock was personified as the sci-fi nerd you knew in junior high school. Then you run into that kid some years later in New York: sneakers growing like pearlized plastic fungus on his feet, perpetual peach fuzz into shapeless afros, game players into keyboards, mixers, or feedback-distorted bass, and gawky Yoda speech turned into punk-funk, psychedelic-glam Brit-pop filtered through Sun Ra–inspired linguistics. Now put that kid into a band of like-minded souls and you have Brooklyn’s Dragons of Zynth opening for Saul Williams at Chicago’s Martyrs' Pub.
In song, the quartet pushes murky, mimetic phrases like D&D role players. “Talk, talk, talk, talk, talk to me” and “Who’s going to rise above this chaos, this insanity?” sing-murmured dual vocalists Aku-Vox and Akwetey-Vox, while drummer Bizza kept a military-band beat going to the side of a Dragons-planted Barack Obama poster. The sonic atmosphere was discursive, electro-squabble, afro-beat doodling turned up to algorithmic levels, what the brothers reluctantly categorize as Afrotek. Their music aerobically exercised minds, if not a mostly perplexed audience's feet.
But the energy was not dismissive. By set’s end, Aku-Vox was in the audience and had roamed into a revved-up crowd of hipsters, blipsters, and math-rock devotees while they pressed in on him in semi–mosh pit style and initial audience hesitancy turned into unstructured dancing abandonment.
It’s a fitting segue into Saul Williams’ performance. Williams’ set began with an extended wait that left an audience edgily slinging aspersions at his arrival. Some 40 minutes after the Dragons’ set had ended, Williams arrived shirtless and covered in glitter, face paint, and feathers while an impatient fan shouted “I didn’t pay for your CD!” — a reference to the Trent Reznor–produced, free-for-the-first-100,000-fans download of Williams' latest album, The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of Niggy Tardust.
Ignoring the disgruntled, but displaying an equally impatient temperament, Williams opened his revival-tinged set with what seemed like an unnecessary admonishment for Dragons of Zynth’s one-song sound problems. “No disrespect to the venue, but you can take away the sound, you can take away the bass, but we are, period,” he said, and then launched into a prayer-poem of thanks to artistic provocateurs past and present, an ode familiar to fans who have read his MySpace influences list.
The predominantly electronic band setup was composed of a laconic guitarist with feathers glued to his arms, an amusingly cavalier keyboardist sporting a Green Lantern mask, and a spastic, one-handed, cymbal-playing mixer dressed as Spider-Man, but the eye-candy costumes and personas didn’t distract focus from Williams.
For two hours Williams shimmied and strutted about the Martyrs' stage with the trademarks of Mick Jagger’s extended chest routine and similarly taunting emotive poses struck at opportune space-agey interludes. All of the tracks on the Reznor-tinged Niggy Tardust were covered, but Williams spliced them with poem interludes and socio-political commentary, including a nod to Barack Obama, who seemed to serve as the night’s patron saint. “You don’t have to have a white mother and a black father in order to be a hybrid,” Williams said. “We are all hybrids. We can have a hybrid representative standing tall.”
What began as a rocky start for the performance artist, poet, actor, and musician was corrected midway through the set when Williams, like his Dragons openers, jumped into the audience. This time the crowd members had their dancing shoes on and surged to be close to the glitter-dripping, feather-dropping singer as he worked from the floor. “Let’s go, brother. Let’s show ’em how we do,” the same previously peeved fan yelled.
By set’s end, the crowd was singing along to every word while being showered in confetti thrown by surreptitiously hidden Dragons, and Williams seemed to have relaxed into the performance. He joked with the audience — “When you get a moment, you can go over to the merch area and pay for the download you received for free” — and even showed his nerdy side. “I’m supposed to say, ‘Neighbor Dave, it’s your anniversary,’ right?’ the singer asked of sweating, perplexed fans. After a short pause, Williams laughingly replied, “Oh fuck, I was trying to prove to you that I read my MySpace messages.”
Comments
Please login to be able to comment on this article.
more