Live

Funny how “Electronica” has so many trappings of rock. After three songs, Moby stripped off his shirt, wiped his face with it, and threw it into the audience.

The samples are flying, the sticks are flying, the whole crowd is flying. Their new disc, Loop Bites Dog (Mammoth) is amazing, but this is fuckin’ INCREDIBLE.

With guitar, bass, drumset, vocals and keyboards, the energy poured off the stage with a gorgeous rapper spewing out words and rhythms like it was nothing.

Not bad, but after all the manic energy we had seen emanating from both stages, the two mixer boys twiddling knobs didn’t really cut it.

Eat Static tried to charge us all up again, sounding almost industrial-dance. The beats were hitting hard, the need to dance once again strong.

Using no guitars, no drums, nothing but a series of ELP-stacked keyboards (is the acronimity a coincidence? I think so), BT rock us with driving, heavy beats.

Whereas the other acts used the drums as accompaniment, Banco played them… slow. And heavy. I hate to say it – it sounded like a cheeze-metal power ballad.

The opinion of Jungle was that the sampled frenetic drums were impossible to play by a human. To this 808 State clearly and succinctly said, “Up Yours.”