kid 606 w/shadetek, domu and nathan michel @ tonic.
kid 606 is true punk. here he is, the man who stubbornly trashes the often overintelligent and idiosyncratic by fronting his love of pop music, yet surpasses their cold theorizing by creating a mosaic of frantic beats, relentless noise and cutup sampling that's not stale. at the same time, his energy is infectious, dropping in known standards and completely decimating them into digital shreds with two powerbooks on stage.
kid 606 stopped by tonic last night here in the lower east side of new york city and he brought his hardcore ethos, evidenced in his tigerbeat6 record label, with him to tear off a few hundred souls' heads. i arrived as nathan michel's set started, where he sat behind a keyboard and laptop, proceeding to play his own classically-inspired compositions with a glitchy twist, giving the impression of a nintendo game in a blender, with strong melodic lines spreading the frantic beat like unco-operative butter on toast. nathan sang as well when he played, giving the bedroom rock a human touch.
after someone from sound-ink did a quick dj set, mixing up squarepusher, golden age hardcore rap and some other brief bits of illbient that came a bit incohesive yet comprehensive, shadetek took the stage. armed with a powerbook (the darkness really highlighted the glowing apple logo) and a turntable processed through some distortion box, they slammed the crowd with a furious stomp of beats and noise, a monster truck commodore 64 from the future. although they couldn't keep the flow from song to song, they managed to work us up for the night ahead.
then kid606 took the stage and shredded everyone down. laptops and some other device in tow, he often played 2 competing pieces of music against each other, often distorting one and then doing a hard digital slice into the other one, mixing up missy elliott, luke vibert, the buggles, n.w.a. and south park into freaky multilevel clashes, juxtaposing their similarities as well as exploding their recognizable features. nevertheless, the beat was mad, hammering away at everyone's ears.
the crowd was eating this shit up, to the point that a slamdance started up front, knocking drinks everywhere. at one point, kid 606 took his beer bottle and smashed it against the wall, putting everyone on notice. this definitely wasn't a place for the trainspotter to check the gear, although he yucked it up as he inadvertently unplugged one laptop's audio connection, then played with rehooking it up.
after building it up for an hour, kid 606 then started to slowly bring it down in intensity, bringing out his more ambient eno-esque music, which showed that he didn't have to hide behind the fancy blipwork. some of the crowd were disappointed, calling for the name of domu, who apparently dj'ed the opening before i arrived. nevertheless, the kid kept plying away before bringing back the noise, announcing at 0125 that he had to pee but if everyone stayed, he was going to do a fucked up mix with some of the remaining guys, pushing a major breakbeat battle.
most of the people left, though, partly because they had been exhausted, including me, who had to struggle back by figuring out which trains would be passing through my stop (construction was messing up the brooklyn lines - the taxis are so much easier, i admit). my head was full now, thanks to the kid, but i will be back for more one day.