So, last night we went to Amon Tobin at the Greek Theater, a wonderful ampitheater with a secret side entrance for people in the know, of which my wife is one. Ha ha, line-waiters! We got out pick of seats, and indeed picked seats three different times. They had pulled pork sandwiches at the concession, and I had one.
First up at the show was an unnamed unannounced DJ. At this point, of the 1700 or so people who had arrived early, two of them decided to stand up. They were right in front of me.
![]()
See that little thing—that's DJ Fuzzy Green Dot. (Probably not his real name.) Anyway, he was terrible. Five minutes of fuzzboxes and one drop, over and over, for half an hour.
Then came the Kronos Quartet!
![]()
Everyone sits for the Kronos Quartet!
They were great, of course. At one point the cellist played the stylophone. Someone threw her bra on stage—a first-time occurrence according to the one Kronos guy who talks. He also called us the best-smelling audience ever. (I think someone was smoking marijuana!) And they played a Tobin song. Apparently, it has been in their repertoire for a while:
Then came Tobin. He has gotten around the problem of live DJ music—basically that it involves watching someone poke at their laptop for an hour—with an expansive stage show based on video projection on a large sculpture. It looks kind of like this:
![]()
You can see him in the big cube, wearing a spacesuit, sans bubble helmet. But the projection changes frequently. Here are some thumbnails of![]()
la_nausicaa's shots from throughout the show:
![Picture 2]( "Picture 2")
A lot of the imagery is science fictional—largely Weyland-Yutani, though a couple of the spaceships really looked like 1970s van art. But the abstractions were better than the narrative elements, and the whole effect—the Disneyesque 'ride' experience, the sternum-vibrating bass, the rest of the music, the performance elements, was really amazing. There was also a secondary light show of dozens of people holding up their smartphones to record, and view, the entire show via their tiny screens. Here's a video of what appears to be the whole show from last year:
But it does not compare. For whatever reason—audio quality, the angle, the screen, the YouTube rendition does not capture the experience of the live spectacle. Highly recommended.
First up at the show was an unnamed unannounced DJ. At this point, of the 1700 or so people who had arrived early, two of them decided to stand up. They were right in front of me.
See that little thing—that's DJ Fuzzy Green Dot. (Probably not his real name.) Anyway, he was terrible. Five minutes of fuzzboxes and one drop, over and over, for half an hour.
Then came the Kronos Quartet!
Everyone sits for the Kronos Quartet!
They were great, of course. At one point the cellist played the stylophone. Someone threw her bra on stage—a first-time occurrence according to the one Kronos guy who talks. He also called us the best-smelling audience ever. (I think someone was smoking marijuana!) And they played a Tobin song. Apparently, it has been in their repertoire for a while:
Then came Tobin. He has gotten around the problem of live DJ music—basically that it involves watching someone poke at their laptop for an hour—with an expansive stage show based on video projection on a large sculpture. It looks kind of like this:
You can see him in the big cube, wearing a spacesuit, sans bubble helmet. But the projection changes frequently. Here are some thumbnails of
la_nausicaa's shots from throughout the show:
A lot of the imagery is science fictional—largely Weyland-Yutani, though a couple of the spaceships really looked like 1970s van art. But the abstractions were better than the narrative elements, and the whole effect—the Disneyesque 'ride' experience, the sternum-vibrating bass, the rest of the music, the performance elements, was really amazing. There was also a secondary light show of dozens of people holding up their smartphones to record, and view, the entire show via their tiny screens. Here's a video of what appears to be the whole show from last year:
But it does not compare. For whatever reason—audio quality, the angle, the screen, the YouTube rendition does not capture the experience of the live spectacle. Highly recommended.