Well, as of this post it's been a week since the night of, but Trylemma and I thought it might be cool to post reviews of the same tour, to give a side by side look at two different nights, in two different places, with two different lineups, but with the same one and only artist / visionary now known as R.A.P. Ferreira.
Flash waaaaaay back to 10/26/2019, I hadn't planned on going to a show that night but Trylemma had asked for some copies of the Nostrum Grocers cassette he'd missed out on in Seattle, and having never seen milo or his alter ego R.A.P. Ferreira live I figured it would be worth the trip. I've always enjoyed milo's unique creativity on record. His stream of consciousness ramblings that often seem random but not if you listen close enough are a trip, and his references to things like The Wire (one of the best shows ever made) and Game of Thrones (see previous comment) reward you for paying attention. I'm not one of his biggest fans by far (as I soon realized upon seeing the joyful crowd he'd assembled) but I like him. I'm glad I got the chance to see him in person, because it's certainly given me more reason to cherish his quirky genius.
Wolf Langis: The show began with former Bottled Water (a now local SF act, see here for their music) emcee and producer Wolf Langis (solo work found here), performing a few rap songs and improvisational beat collages. I can definitely say I liked his rap songs, the jam sessions didn't manage to hold my attention but as I may have mentioned before on this blog I've never been able to get excited about instrumental hip hop or electronic music. His mostly seemed to be distorted noise and offbeat drums, not particularly interesting but not horrible either. His overall style on full songs was reminiscent of Anticon or Fake Four acts, trippy melodic production forming the backdrop for angsty rants about the state of starving artistdom(ry?). This is actually my second time seeing him, he also opened for Ceschi at the same location and I will say I just downloaded both Bottled Water albums to get some insight into where he came from, so obviously I'm curious.
Pieces: Second up was duo Pieces (Idhaz & Rose Cherami, their music can be found here). The two nicest things I can say about this act is they're fearless and passionate, and that the audience seemed to get them at least. Neither I nor my companion were particularly impressed. The production was mostly boring and relied too heavily on noise and distortion verses melody. There was obviously some talent there, the singer was a decent vocalist and an entertaining dancer but often the instrumentals drowned out their lyrics and it wound up sounding a bit like two different records played in the same room at the same time, one female singer songwriter the other Nine Inch Nails. Improper mixing maybe, but I think it was likely just how this particular noise act wanted to sound. Good effort, they certainly weren't giving the audience half their attention. Just very solidly not my kind of music at all.
Kaila Chare: Next we had a young woman named Kaila Chare (her SoundCloud is here). She was an extremely likeable stage personality, admitting to being nervous due to never playing in SF before, and being more familiar with basements than clubs. As a rapper she was talented, using complex rhyme schemes and a hip hop oriented flow, the kind you could tell originated as a poem in a notebook before it was ever envisioned as a song. Her overall lyrics were meaningful and heartfelt, and she seemed to have a particular vision for her act as performance art, standing perfectly still at certain points as the music washed over her. Unfortunately I noticed that she was rapping over her full songs instead of the instrumentals, and it made the whole set sound a bit odd, with a doubling effect on all of her vocals. Not sure if this was intentional or not, it did give her a novel performance. Decent production as well. Definitely someone with potential that hasn't fully been realized yet.
Phantom Thrett: At this point I wasn't expecting much from the next performer, but I have to say I was very pleasantly surprised with this next cat. Phantom Thrett is an LA county based rapper and producer (peep his work here), who relies on soulful melodic sampling and a poetic spoken word type rap style. I noticed he would sync up his samples and drum loops on his laptop at the beginning of every song and loop them until he was finished, very much the digital ages version of the back to basics two turntables and a microphone. All I kept thinking was how is this guy not more well known? His lyrics were very deep and meaningful, and his delivery was spot on. He had an old soul stage presence, a humility and maturity that made him seem like more of a seasoned professional than an up and comer. For fans of Mello Music Group and Brother Ali, and I highly do recommend his work. At one point he did choke on a song and forget the lyrics, but I do believe that it can be a measure of your competence as a performer how you handle something like that, and he just laughed it off and went right into the next song.
R.A.P. Ferreira
New song, Big Summer
Now I'm not as familiar with R.A.P.'s work as Trylemma, I've heard all of it but not as often as other albums I like. For that reason I'll leave out a specific set list and just go with my overall impressions of the show.
One thing I think is important to mention is that looking at the audience I was amused and happy to note that everyone seemed to have lost their inhibitions and were just getting into the music. Ferreira's weirdness seemed to be contagious in a very nice way, nobody seemed to be trying to look cool or deny who they really were. One guy in front of me had some of the strangest dance moves I've ever seen, and he's totally awesome for that.
Randal Bravery (what the hell, check him out here) came onstage first and mixed up some tracks for us, followed by the main man himself. In between weird comments, beseeching us to tag the word STRESS everywhere we could (after his performance of "stressrunstheworld" off his newest tape release) R.A.P. flowed with precision, making it all look easy. His low key ramblings are truly so much better live, they should be taken with the personality behind them whenever possible and I gained a much stronger appreciation for him as an artist after that night. Randal Bravery also performed a verse on one of the songs and I really liked his style as well. Definitely a multi-talented artist both behind and before the boards.
Now the song both Trylemma and I believe capped off the evenings was "Big Summer" (see my video above), a new track off his official upcoming release. Over a smooth and haunting beat Ferreira reflected on his struggles to become who he is today. Watching some get placards while he just got a set of spatulas, to paraphrase. In the past I sometimes didn't understand the message milo tried to convey, I felt a bit like he wandered into "weird for the sake of weird" territory on occasion (not to take away the fact that it always sounded good), but this was a solid and meaningful song about the strength of determination and reliance on your friends (Ruby Yacht in this case). If this is what we can expect going forward from the new incarnation of Rory Ferreira, then I believe good things are indeed on the horizon.
Thanks for taking the time to read this, it's the longest post I've done in a while certainly. I'll see ya'll Friday!
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