Loud Music at its Finest
Excision and his marvelous 100,000 watt contraption.
It can often times seem like the esoteric phenomenon known as dubstep emits particular frequencies which only a select few recognize as brilliant. While many will never so much as touch the stuff, I’ve seen many a non-believer change their tune after a single night spent gurning against a sub.
The truth is that people who get dubstep can’t get enough of the stuff, and we couldn’t give a fancy fuck less if people don’t understand why. When you play dubstep at a loud enough volume, it becomes a holy experience, which is why artists like Excision and Paper Diamond are regarded as profits and venues, like Club Nokia, the church. So, let the bass cannon kick it. Bump that system in the red all day. When the cops knock down your door, tell them you’re on a bass sabbatical. Or you can do what I do when the cops show and put on some mariachi and act like I don’t know where it’s coming from.
Onlookers are wowed by Paper Diamond’s Set.
Most of the crowd entered that evening to the sounds of Vaski, who did a proper job of warming up a room packed to the brim with bass-heads and dub-hards alike. As Club Nokia slowly saturates, people assume the general area they wish to occupy for the next 3-or-so hours. (The best acoustics are on the top right balcony facing the stage.)
You’ve got to love one of those cats who comes out of the gates, not with bells and whistles and bling, but with fucking talent and finesse. Paper Diamond performs like a man of simple pleasures; he humbly lets his audience know that he appreciates their presence, then proceeds to blow their eardrums into another dimension with an array of forward thinking trapstep bangers and other bass heavy hits. It was only minutes into his set before Paper Diamond had everyone head bobbin’ and foot movin’.
One of the great things about electronic music shows is that the set-up time in between artists is virtually nothing at all, and it took Paper Diamond a mere 10 minutes, if that, to get psyched up, cue up his songs, and polish his diamond before his set, Excisions massive A/V backdrop took a few minutes longer. This allowed for ample time to play out the new Lowriderz EP in the meantime – a UVSF favorite. It would appear Adam An-ten-nae and Laura Low have some friends (fans?) in high places.
With a thunderous bass cannon few can replicate, Excision takes the stage. That is no exaggeration; Excision spins behind a behemoth of a 3-D projection screen that takes up the entire stage at Nokia. The random-as-fuck video projection mixed with X’s custom 100,000 watt system, built specifically to melt the faces of everyone within the first 10 rows at his show, makes for an intensely engaging show. Among the kings leading the dubstep scene at the moment, Excision’s performance is hard to top. My only real gripe was with the venue; Club Nokia is attached to a number of other buildings, and with the amount of bass constantly exploding on stage, sound dispersed throughout a majority of the venue was entirely unlistenable. Many fans who paid to be there were constantly complaining of the sound quality – meanwhile, deep within the confides of the mall where Nokia is located, normal were unknowingly bobbing their heads.
The Paper Diamond / Excision combo is brilliant. We get to hear a bit of the old, the popular, the heavy, and the future of music. If you are fiending for your fix of some deafeningly heavy, turn-your-internal-organs-into-liquid bass then look no further than the Executioner Tour.
Credit: Blindfold Photography
Credit: Blindfold Photography
Credit: Blindfold Photography
Credit: Blindfold Photography