On what seemed like an otherwise tranquil Valentine’s eve in Downtown Miami – sidewalks laden with hobos bundled up in sheets, errant crack heads begging for change, fiends to the next hit – and a swarm of fashionable young people, lining those same sidewalks rife with anticipation, as one of the foremost figures of the current EDM craze, Diplo, closed out his joint tour with Sleigh Bells, which spanned Florida only “Paradise Lost” and concluded with a date at Downtown’s Grand Central; they were accompanied by Black Metal band, Liturgy.
I will start off by saying that the sonic palette of this line-up was as frustratingly diffuse as anything I’ve ever been confronted with. I arrived at the venue greeted by a crowd of markedly young and well-dressed people, running the gamut from your prototypical club-goer, to your run-of-the-mill Midtown-prowling Hipster. I navigated my way through the crowd and toward the front, when almost in complete synchrony with my movements, Liturgy took the stage. I cannot describe the agony with which my ears were assaulted at that instance with anything other than a mention of just how much they hurt the following day, mostly due to Liturgy’s set. It was basically cacophonous shredding, at the speed of sound, itself – complemented (if you can even call it that) by high-pitched guttural screams. If there were any lyrics to what I heard, I certainly couldn’t discern any. Needless to say, everyone was looking around at each other, looking just as baffled by what was happening on stage as I was.
When Sleigh Bells took the stage, I was wondering if Liturgy was about to pull an encore, as the same sort of shredding continued: not the sort of thing I associate with Sleigh Bell’s lively Noise Pop – it wasn’t until the striking lead singer, Alexis Krauss, took the stage that the realization that they had adopted more of a Metal-influenced sound had dawned upon me; it should have been expected, especially in lieu of the fact that lead guitarist, Derek E. Miller once played guitar for Ft. Lauderdale-based Metal band Poison the Well. Many in attendance were sporting knock-off Chicago Bulls jerseys, altered to say “Slay Bells” on them; so the fanfare behind the duo was certainly considerable. While the band did play some of the tracks off of their acclaimed debut album “Treats,” they stuck mostly to the material off their forthcoming sophomore release “Reign of Terror.” The contrast between these two albums is a stark one, in terms of both sonic and lyrical convictions.
The party-ready flourishes of “Treats” are gone – replaced by heavy instrumentation on guitar and deep, emotional overtones on Krauss’ lyrics. A change of direction is always a welcome thing, but Krauss’ voice is not suited to the sort of heavy riffing and instrumentation that accompanied it. She is essentially singing the same way she did on the first album – all bubblegum Pop and such, while all sorts of chaos is breaking loose in the background, overpowering the vocals; it’s really just a complete mismatch that never really congeals into anything compelling, at least in a live setting. Sleigh Bells played a little over an hour, at which point Diplo took the stage. His energy is shook the place, sending the floor into a tremor of sweating, writhing bodies. If you were someone who hasn’t seen Diplo before, this performance would have been a great introduction to his musical proclivities. He loves to drop raucous Caribbean beat-laden House tracks, and has some original pieces that he composed with his main project, the House duo, Major Lazer. He spun some of his Major Lazer material, and veered off into a Dub-heavy set, playing massive Dubstep tracks for a good half hour.
While his charisma and energy were palpable, I was not tremendously impressed with his musical selection. He played it safe, sticking to instantly recognizable tracks, which he manipulated with all sorts of flourishes on his laptop. Having seen him at last year’s Dancegiving Festival, this set paled in comparison. The evening was an underwhelming affair in sum, but had some flourishes of brilliance by all the performers involved, and the crowd was thoroughly enthused – generating an unbearable torrent of body heat, with all the couples in attendance retreating from the chaos whenever possible for a blatant P.D.A-session. It felt like Valentine’s day in Miami – and everyone remembered to get down accordingly.
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