Zen Guerrilla Brings Their Punk-Gospel-Blues to Berlin
Hiphop exemplars, antiheroes, poets in disguise: Anti-Pop Consortium proved they are all that, if not more, beginning their antics as soon as they hit the stage sometime after midnight. There was Beans, with mohawk and aviators. There was High Priest, wearing a t-shirt that said GENERIC underneath a cartoon drawing of a sheep. And there was Sayyid, lanky and graceful, fiercely normal-looking next to the other two, "the poetic one," as my friend put it. High Priest did a mic check: "Testes, testes, the one-nut wonder," and they were off, unleashing their hallucinogenic, rapid-fire bundles of verbiage on a crowd that seemed frankly bewildered at times.
This set, their third of the night (the other two were at the Knitting Factory), was far more uptempo and aggressive than their album Tragic Epilogue, with its dark, ambient production. DJ C-X provided equally spare and repetitive beats for the three MCs to work with, beats that got the job done but didn't do much more. They didn't need to: Anti-Pop are all about the lyrics, a throwback in a way to a time when rappers were, let's not mince words here, nerds. There was such a time, before gangsta, when the hard boys were off doing whatever hard boys do while other kids stayed in their rooms with a thesaurus or wore out their mom's parquet trying to do head spins. I know an old-school MC who has a "word of the day," complete with definition, on his voicemail.
"You gots to get up on your vocab/you gots to have vocab," say the Jurassic 5 on their new disc, and if they themselves don't always live up to that, well, Anti-Pop are here to fulfill the promise. Rapping about "hazel astringent" and goods "with a street value of cornstarch"; masters of the elaborate dis ("Why is it that your mind is like/a mausoleum uninhabited at night"), with rhymes encompassing RuPaul, Scary Spice, the Bee Gees and Alvin Ailey, humpback whales and "a razor-edge butterfly," Anti-Pop are true verbal maestros. They're funky as well, in their own way, and in all senses of the word?Beans with his rhythmic Jamaican-style delivery, Sayyid looping around and in and out of the beat. Anti-Pop just don't sound like other hiphop, and they know it: "Don't talk to those weirdoes/with the weird flows," they satirize nonfans. The group see themselves as the next wave, rather than some kind of return to roots?you can find an online interview with Adam Heimlich in which High Priest talks about being the "next evolutionary step"?and they are critical of today's flossy, Hot 97-style rap (Priest compares it to Cheap Trick and ELO, which I guess makes Anti-Pop Roxy Music).
Anti-Pop has been embraced by WFMU and a hip, (mostly) white demographic that was much in evidence at Brownies. "This is a real Other Music crowd," hissed my friend-the-fan-of-Sayyid when we first walked in, and a few Rheingolds later, "Look?that one's got an Other Music bag." The crowd wasn't moving much during Anti-Pop's set, because that's not what it was about (which might be what leads some people to consider them more performance poetry than actual hiphop), not because they were a bunch of stiffs. Plenty of folks were dancing during the set by the opener, UV Ray, a band, featuring ex-Soul Coughing members Sebastian Steinberg and Yuval Gabay, that played dance music. That is to say, the band proceeded to play parts that are normally filled by samples and drum machines. They did a good job, you could say, but what does that really mean? UV Ray were up onstage performing, but not interacting. They weren't spontaneously rapping and harmonizing on "Turn it up, sound man," they weren't miming shooting the crowd with a machine gun, they weren't Beans beginning a rap at a tempo he couldn't keep up with, cracking up and starting over. If this night proved anything, it was that getting down isn't always what it seems to be, that your ass can be free while your mind is in lockstep. Anti-Pop Consortium are way outside, the Ornettes and Don Cherrys of hiphop if you will, and if that means you can't dance to them, so be it. They can still blow your mind.
Eva Neuberg
"I'm diggin' deep!" Zen Guerrilla's Marcus Durant testified behind his trademark shades, after a howling mid-set scissor-kick off the monitor. He was collapsed on the stage, dripping sweat and drool, his chest heaving, and he muttered like Elvis into the mic. "Thank yew vereh much. I'm diggin' motherfuckin' deep. I hope you recognize that." Then the singer straightened his 6-foot-7-inch frame?probably 7 feet with the afro?and the band tore into "Seeker" by the Who.
The cover was fitting. "Maximum R&B" is a term the Who have used for their music, but Delaware's Zen Guerrilla, touring off and on for almost two years now, play like that title was invented for them. When he signed them, Jello Biafra described Zen Guerrilla as "Hardcore Motown." Whatever you call their distorted and monstrous mix of punk, soul, gospel and blues, Berliners found out it's one hell of a way to spend a Tuesday night.
Most of the crowd stood in stunned silence during the first few numbers, while Marcus thrashed around the stage like a snake handler at a Tennessee tent revival. But after watching drummer Andy Duvall pound with four sticks at once, they got the idea that the beat was for dancing. Some moshed around, some even grinded with a partner, and others just stomped their feet and clapped their hands?so they could keep their eyes on the giant frontman, who moved as if he had little Jon Spencer fighting to get out of his back pocket.
The set drew mainly from the heavy boogie of their last album, 1999's Trance States in Tongues (Sub Pop). They also performed a double-time version of Sam Cooke's "Change Is Gonna Come," originally a slow-burning soul number, which Marcus admitted hearing Otis Redding do first. When I shouted for their live staple, a cover of David Bowie's "Moonage Daydream," which the band does as "a tribute to Mick Ronson," the drunk girl next to me thought I was saying "ice cream." So she started yelling at the top of her lungs for ice cream, which the musicians got a kick out of. "I scream, you scream, we all scream for 'Moonage Daydream,'" Marcus laughed.
After the final encore, the band looked pretty spent. They played at full bore for almost two hours, and there were no ballads in this set. "I gave you everything I've got. Danke," a weary Marcus announced, before heading backstage. But not exactly. Later, as the group was breaking down their gear, the drunk girl approached Marcus and demanded her ice cream. So, mindful of keeping up international relations, he took her next door and bought her a vanilla cone. "Rock und roll!" she exclaimed, with a slight accent, as she took a lick.
Chris Weber