Lo Fidelity Allstars with Q-Burns Abstract Message
Respectable Street Cafe, West Palm Beach, Fla. (May 18, 1999)
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Lo Fidelity Allstars
Respectable Street Cafe, West Palm Beach, Fla.
May 18, 1999 |
The lesson: "How to Operate with a Blown Mind."
The teachers: The Lo Fidelity Allstars.
The result: A full-out sensory spectacular demanding audience members learn the lesson -- albeit a quick one -- without missing a step.
With five bandmates as instructors, England's hottest underground dance export melded a high-caliber sound and sight experience inside Respectable's close confines.
The Allstars have been one of the few acts of the "Electronica" age to successfully blend the rave and rock cultures by mixing DJs with live musicians. Though technical wizardry can mesh the two talents in the studio, this British band proved it was capable of bringing them together live on stage.
The Allstars led with the first two tracks from their debut release, How To Operate With A Blown Mind, as a haze of smoke filled the club and four spiraling projector lights bounced across the pulsating crowd. Paired with thumping bass rhythms, the visual stimulation kept the energy level at full tilt for 50 minutes.
The band's minor buzz hit, an improved reworking of "Battleflag" originally by Seattle grunge rock offshoot Pigeonhed, drew more people to the already crammed dance floor.
Just as the crowd was starting to groove with '70s disco homages, "Lazer Sheep Dip Funk" and "Blisters on My Brain," the school bell rang and the sensory assault was over.
The crowd -- whether exhausted or stunned from Allstars experience -- couldn't muster enough applause to warrant an encore for the short set.
Before the Allstars hit the stage, Orlando's Q-Burns Abstract Message demonstrated what a single person armed with the same weapons but only one set of hands could do.
Alone on stage, the nationally-recognized DJ, aka Michael Donaldson, hopped from keyboard to sample machines in a Jim Carrey-esque frenzy, producing an impromptu composition loosely based on his recorded work.
Q-Burns had a stripped-down multimedia show, flanking the stage with the two screens that displayed live feeds from onstage cameras, kaleidoscope patterns and footage of Japanese sci-fi hero Ultraman.
JON GLASS |