Two masked men stand hunched over, facing each other from opposite sides of back-to-back tables, looking as if they are intently conducting an experiment in a Technicolor-lit laboratory. One flicks a switch here, the other adjusts a knob there, with both scurrying from apparatus to apparatus, bobbing their heads as they manipulate the machinery.
What sounds like a scene from the Twilight Zone is in fact a scene from Sunday night’s show at the Majestic, where SBTRKT (aka Aaron Jerome) was joined with vocalist and musician Sampha for an hour and a half of the mind- and ear-boggling talent that is SBTRKT live.
Though the crowd was a tad older, a bit more subdued and significantly less neon than most Madison electronic crowds, they came out on Easter Sunday itching for a good time, cheering wildly when the London-based duo took the stage around 11:30 and continuing to do so after nearly every song.
The genre-defying SBTRKT didn’t deliver the consistent dance beat most associate with electronic music, but the crowd went wholeheartedly with what the duo did deliver: intricate, subtle layered sounds and instruments with enough good vibes frosting to rival any layer cake in deliciousness.
Although SBTRKT has only released one 12-song album, the duo played just about every track on it, from the signature “Ready Set Loop” to the almost startlingly atypical “Wildfire” featuring Little Dragon. But the duo did far from press play on a recorded track.
Sampha provided vocals for such tracks as “Hold On” and “Trials of the Past” and played the keyboard throughout the set, and both he and SBTRKT played drums, with SBTRKT on a drum set and Sampha on a smaller kit. SBTRKT leapt from his drum set at the front of the stage to the perpendicular double-sided DJ booth in the center of it while Sampha alternated between his keyboards and microphone, his drum kit and his side of the DJ booth. Neither musician had a still moment.
The blend of live and recorded instruments and vocals produced a sound that was familiar, yet markedly different, with no song sounding identical to its recorded version. The songs were both more raw, with Sampha’s vocals hazier and more muffled than the cleanly mixed recordings, and more polished and evolved, with tracks going beyond the confines of their recorded versions. It seemed as if the recorded version were a mere skeleton for the live set, with sounds going in unexpected directions and into new keys and tempos.
The standout example of this evolution was the live version of “Go Bang.” The recorded version is an almost earthy, soothing, building and looping track with swells, both hand and kit drumming and trilling electronic sounds. All of those qualities were magnified, manipulated and retooled in the live version, giving the feeling that that particular sound was never to be repeated but only re-imagined in the next show. In fact, every song felt like that.
In explaining his decision to perform with a mask, SBTRKT has said that he wanted the music to be first and stand for itself, and in this set it definitely was, with lighting taking a backseat and video being nonexistent. The lighting was mostly strobe, with flashes of red, purple and blue and flickering white filling the moments between the beats.
This approach would be minimal for most electronic shows, but not only is SBTRKT not clearly electronic, but the lighting meshed with the sounds, and at times even accented it. In one instance, the lights plunged Sampha into darkness while flashing lights on SBTRKT’s drumming, then extinguished the lights on SBTRKT and illuminated Sampha on his drums. This back and forth lasted no more than a minute, but the quasi-spotlights added a touch of frenzy to the mostly warm and pleasant atmosphere where bobbing and swaying were more in place than the few who tried to fist pump.
Though the duo claimed that “Never Never” was the last track after playing for just over an hour, they came out for an encore after the foot-stamping crowd demanded “one more song.” The frenetic crowd was rewarded with two.
When the final reverberations of “Right Thing to Do” finished the show, the crowd seemed happily sated, but anxious for the duo to return as SBTRKT promised they would in the beginning of his set. Should SBTRKT and Sampha make their way back, they are sure to be greeted with an even more eager crowd who in turn will be rewarded with a fresh and unreplicable show.
