Dat Brass
Dat Brass, not bad but it didn’t ignite for Pavlis.
NNF
As anyone who regular reads the blather I write here may know, for a long time I suffered from saxophobia*. Tonight’s ten piece band DAT BRASS - featuring sousaphone, two trombones, two saxes and two trumpets - along with percussion and live scratching/mixing - represent perhaps the most extreme form of exposure therapy I have tried to overcome my irrational fear of brass instruments....
It starts well, with a deep bass drone and rattling percussion. At their best - like on Solder or Clatch No. 9 - Dat Brass produce a dubtastic mix of the modern Brit jazz Sons of Kemet and the classic turntablism of Endtroducing era DJ Shadow. At its worst, it too noodly, lounge jazz for me, with the band displaying their chops to the detriment of the songs, with the dubstep sound and Old Skool scratching sounding dated and passé. Unfortunately, the latter outweigh the former, and I have it on good authority that this is not s touch On Levitation Orchestra’s performance t’other night.
This is not helped by an audience a good percentage of which seems to be here with the dual intentions of getting as pissed as possible while taking VERY LOUDLY, for whom it seems that the music is little more than an unwelcome distraction. Look, I get the social aspect of gigs but surely the time to chat is before and after the set or, at a push, between songs? The occassional comment about the songs and the performance I can understand but problems with plumbers, how cute one’s sister’s baby is and the cost of bedroom carpet, all of which I hear tonight? Really? It’s not as if there isn’t a perfectly good bar outside.
Still, this is neither the band’s fault nor the fault of the NNF. Let’s concentrate on the positives. Dat Brass, have some very good tunes and are clearly committed to their art. The sound and lights are great. And the exposure therapy seems to be working.
(* this is of course an exaggeration in a - probably misguided - attempt at humour. It’s not brass instruments I have a phobia of. The phobia is to be found at opposite ends of the jazz scale: skronky free jazz and easy listening lounge jazz.)
