DJ Spooky took San Francisco's The Independent on an international voyage with stops in China, Iran, Jamaica and a few other exotic locales to promote his recent album, The Secret Song, which was released on Oct. 9.
Local hip-hop/glitch duo Mochipet, out of Daly City, opened for Spooky with a series of computerized beats and digitally distorted lines from the MC that could've either been freestyled on the spot or pre-written. A few beats breached the generic but vocals were slightly too muddled to be understood.
Paul D. Miller, whose full moniker is "DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid" (a reference to a character in a William S. Burroughs story), took some time to assure his entire set-up was ready to roll, then popped in his first disc and got moving.
Spooky didn't use any actual records in his performance, but instead built his mélange of sounds using a spool of pre-recorded CDs that were inserted according to need into his MacBook Pro and fed through two digital turntables, which is where the ultra-quick spinning took place. Though Spooky is sure to still search far and wide for the origins of his projects, eschewing the physical record for the digital is growing more and more popular these days.
Particularly vocal both on the microphone and through the political images that appeared on the screen in the background, Spooky explained how his new record deals with the globalization of sound and the role of music in our modern international culture. The show, he said, would be aimed at capturing the essence of the album by traveling the globe and acknowledging the music of each culture.
The first half of the roughly 90-minute set featured heavy doses of dirty reggae/dub verses layered on a variety of remixes and mash-ups—some that used familiar songs such as Dead Prez's "It's Bigger Than Hip-Hop" and Blackstreet's "No Diggity," and others that echoed flavors of Superfly-like funk and vintage '80s Police. If there was any destination this portion of the show landed on, Kingston, Jamaica would likely be it.
The second half spanned to further worldwide reaches, integrating Middle Eastern sounds into beats while flashing clips from the recent Iranian election scandal and a cycle of phrases in various languages that could've been either poetry or political war cries. Spooky didn't showboat, though he very well could've, but rather used his scratches to send each progression to the next movement with what sounded like alien lasers firing off.
New Delhi, India, was the final destination of the night, and the combination of tablas with other percussion and falsetto singers gave these portions true authenticity. Though the elements used possessed transportable power and the beats were fresh, there was a certain lack of drops and builds to get more than a few random bodies moving consistently. Perhaps Spooky was saving it for the end, but the final few songs took on more danceable, full-flavored characteristics, and, combined with his lickety-split scratches, finally got just about everyone to move in the extra-national location.
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