What can artists working in the outsider avant-electro genre offer in a live performance that can’t be derived from home listening? Last Sunday’s Prefuse 73 (otherwise known as Atlanta mixmaster Scott Herren) show at Lee’s Palace offered wildly different approaches to the problem posed.
The crowd at Lee’s was typical gentrified hip-hop-hipster white guys rocked murkily-coloured hoodies and neck beards, doing their best to appear uninterested. Their physical response to the show involved a lot of head bobbing, and the only people dancing shouldn’t have been. The venue, however, was packed, and there was visible excitement about seeing Prefuse. The sound was crisp and clear and much better than most other Toronto clubs.
Antipop Consortium’s Beans, touring in support of his electro hip-hop solo debut (Tomorrow Right Now), opened for Prefuse in a bill that featured four acts in total. Beans rapped over canned beats, his braggadocio and sexual posturing held the audience’s rapt attention to his staccato rhymes that clashed with his glitchy electro beats. He performed several tracks from his new album and a couple of Antipop Consortium burners, which elicited a bit more response from the otherwise reserved crowd, and a couple of very nice new tracks that featured some seriously banging beats. He opened and closed his set with impressive a cappella rhymes and held the crowd in the pocket of his tight-fitting pants throughout the set.
In contrast to Beans’ minimal set-up, Prefuse 73’s Herren added a drummer and turntablist while he worked the sampler. Playing an almost equal distribution of tracks from his debut album (Vocal Studies and Uprock Narratives), his sophomore release (One Word Extinguisher), and unreleased material, Prefuse had something for fans old and new. Unfortunately, their performance lacked the personality, charisma, and sexuality that made Beans’ performance so enthralling. The added musicians provided a fresh element, but all three remained hidden behind their instruments, avoiding eye contact and certainly not saying a word. They could have taken a page out of fellow electro oddball Manitoba’s book-when he played Lee’s also with a trio last year, they rocked the house, energetic and fun, even without actually saying much to the crowd.
There’s no doubt that the music from both Beans and Prefuse was superlative, but Beans was the showman-he engaged the crowd and left them wanting more. Prefuse, on the other hand, added little to their show. It was nice to see Herren with others who enjoyed his music, but with neither stage presence nor a participatory audience, I found little reason to see him again instead of continuing to buy and enjoy his new releases in the comfort of my own home, where I can dance and the hipsters won’t make fun of me.
