The poster for The Hard Sell, DJ Shadow and Cut Chemist’s current touring project, has pictures of giant robot jukeboxes destroying iPods with their laser eyes. The paradigm implied is a perfect summation of the two DJ’s styles. On one hand they create a very unique, modern sound. On the other they both share a disdain for modern musical methods, preferring old school 45’s to computers. Between them they have an extremely impressive collection of original pressings, and on Monday night at First Avenue they sampled and scratched enough of them to create what can only be called an orchestra of new out of the old.
The show wasn’t just two DJ’s mixing and
scratching though - there were two large video screens with visual art by Ben
The Hard Sell - Photo by Jon Behm
Stokes playing throughout. There was also a Hard Sell introductory video as well as a brief history of the 45. The video helped to point out what may not have been obvious to the audience: Spinning 45’s isn’t easy. Not only do the little records spin faster, they also break easier and are more difficult to mix and scratch.
Having established an understanding of their art with the crowd, Cut Chemist and Shadow preceded to get down to what they do best: creating incredible sounds out of chaos. With eight turntables and four mixers on the table, the intrepid duo began flipping vinyl like pancakes. Artists old and new were mixed and matched together in a never-ending cascade of funky rhythms and breakbeats. Practically no musical genre was ignored, Samba, Bollywood, Soul, Blues, Rock, Hip Hop and many more. Dunlop and Brown’s “Space Invaders” rubbed shoulders with Afrika Bambataa’s “Planet Rock.” The Gilligan’s Island theme song was mashed up with Zep’s “Stairway to Heaven.” Every time you could pinpoint the music it took you down another sonic detour.
With so many genres and styles mashed together, I’m sure that everyone took away their favorite pieces of the show. Some may have even loved every last minute of it. Personally, I leaned more towards the faster paced Soul and Electro sampling. The ultimate highlight, however, was just experiencing two artists that I have a huge amount of respect for in their element. It was also great seeing Cut Chemist on his own in the limelight after seeing him share the stage for so many years with groups like Jurassic Five and Ozomotli (though I miss his influence on J5).
Cut Chemist - Photo by Jon Behm
On the flipside, the one place I was disappointed was at the end of the show. While the entire set felt as if it was building to some gigantic finale, the show’s finish simply found us listening to strains of James Brown while the artists gave high fives and shout outs. True, just before that both Shadow and Chemist came out and did some spinning on custom turntables hanging around their necks (which had a very high cool factor) but it just wasn’t the mind blowing crescendo that I had been hoping for.
Be that as it were, it was still a great set, and a far cry from the kind of music I usually see at First Avenue. It’s also worth mentioning that Kid Koala, a great DJ in his own right, was a brilliant opener. All in all the evening brought us three of the most talented DJ’s in North America, and all in a single evening. For me anyway, that isn’t really so much of a “hard sell” at all.
