Tag Archives: Chase Turner

Girl Talk @ First Avenue

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girl_talk

Photo by Bao Nguyen

Interview by Chase Turner 

I got to sit down with Greg Gillis aka Girl Talk before his sold out show at First Avenue on Monday. When I got on the tour bus he was saran wrapping his laptop in preparation for the show. There were vitamin supplements and discarded odwalla juice containers all over the place, apparently everyone on the tour was sick, you’d never know it from the show. We talked about his live show, his album creation process, and those Microsoft “I am a PC” commercials. 
 

More Cowbell: You use audio mulch to create your live shows, it’s a looping program, right? 

Greg Gillis: When you open it up it’s blank, you can use it in a variety of ways. I think its primary use and how I got into it is signal processing, if you were to run a song through it, or run a guitar through it, it does really nice real time processing. You can go crazy with it. In the early days, in the early stuff I was doing was primarily taking a pop song and digitally manipulating it, tearing it up, so that’s what I used the program for. From there, there are a bunch of different applications and there is a loop player on it. The setup I designed way back when was a way to do live  

More Cowbell: How much versatility does that give you during your shows? 

GG: For me, and the amount of samples I have, there’s a ton of stuff I’m able to do, but don’t try to do. Doing a collage in real time takes up all my attention, you could hear a drum beat, that could be five distinct loops that I’m triggering on and off. You can do tons of stuff, you can cut up samples in real time, but my stuff is so quick moving through samples that I try not to do much beyond triggering samples because it slows down the music. 

More Cowbell: It seems like you stick to a pretty consistent live show. 

GG: Yeah, every night, even if I try to go through the same source material, I can’t re-create the same show, everything’s so distinct. Every show where I get some free time I’ll try and work on some pieces. To me, the live show is one piece of music that is constantly, slowly evolving. It’s the same template, including certain things, taking away certain other things. I’ve done the same thing many nights, but how I go about it, the transition elements, that varies night to night. I’m constantly working on stuff to introduce to live shows; I played at this spot about a year ago, so the set will be about 100% different.  

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Broken Social Scene @ First Avenue

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Chase Turner sez..

Where do I begin? Last night Broken Social Scene reminded me why I love indie rock, and why I love First Avenue. The show was nearly sold out, but the crowd was well-behaved and the sound well-mixed and loud. The band was composed of the usual smattering of Toronto musicians; Lizzie Powell of Land of Talk supplied female vocals until her voice gave out in the first hour of the nearly two and a half hour set.

You would think with five guitars and a horn section onstage the sound would get muddled. It was quite the opposite; the band was raw and visceral and complex. The stage banter was entertaining and at times political (what isn’t political these days?). Perhaps the highlight of the onstage chatting was Kevin Drew perfectly summing up the vibe at the Hard Times Café in Cedar-Riverside: the cook muttering “fuck” under his breath or the depression-era mood that pervades the vegetarian-only joint. Near the end of the show audience members were asked to scream at the top of their lungs about whatever was bothering them; apparently people have a lot to take issue with.

This band has constantly evolved and consistently impressed, but the early material still holds up as the best. The band acknowledged this by playing more old material than new (“I know you guys want to hear the old stuff!”), despite the fact that they are touring in support of Brendan Canning’s Broken Social Scene Presents Something for All of Us album. This was certainly a departure from their summer tour which was heavily dominated by Drew’s soloish effort. I don’t have an exact set list, but they performed roughly half the tracks off of You Forgot It in People and their self-titled album.

It’s difficult to choose highlights from such a solid concert, but there are definite notable moments. The swell at the end of “Cause=Time” was roaring, “Ibi Dreams of Pavement (A Better Day)” got the crowd into a frenzy, “7/4 Shoreline” was wonderfully executed. At one point Kevin Drew got off the stage and walked through the audience hi-fiving and hugging fans. Another moment of spontaneity came when the band had an impromptu jam.

When it was time for the encore half the club had emptied because it was nearly 1 am on Monday night and people needed to work in the morning, it had nothing to do with the music. Drew didn’t leave the stage as the band exited before the encore; it seemed he just wanted to play all night. When Drew sang the opening lyrics to Public Image’s “Rise,” I was hoping they would go into a full-blown cover, but instead came “Stand Alone” by Bob Marley & the Wailers. Broken Social Scene was certainly worth the price of admission – twenty bucks and a groggy Tuesday morning. – Chase Turner

Cut Copy & The Presets @ Fine Line

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If there’s one thing I learned last night, it’s that Minneapolis kids can get down when they want to. Last night a bunch of Aussies blew the top off the Fine Line. By the time I arrived at the venue Kordan had finished their set and The Presets were playing to a packed, nearly sold out house (apparently there were a few tickets left). The duo from Sydney delivered a pretty standard set drawing heavily from this year’s Apocalypso; they got a great response. Behind them (and later Cut Copy) were two panels of fluorescent tube lighting that switched through colors and patterns, the coolest light setup I’ve seen at the Fine Line.

Cut Copy took the stage at almost exactly 11 pm and opened with “Nobody Lost, Nobody Found.” The raucous crowd filled up the main floor to the point where it was difficult to move. “Hello Saint Louis!” shouted front man Dan Whitford – it was unclear if he was joking or not. Throughout the set the energy remained high. The audience was wild, crowd surfers came along every few minutes, and a few times the crowd more closely resembled a mosh pit than a dance floor. It was all in good fun, and included a lot of simply jumping up and down due to lack of space. The band sculpted a pretty stellar setlist using most of their material from Bright Like Neon Love and this year’s (fantastic) In Ghost Colours. The latest single, “Lights and Music,” was placed perfectly near the end of the set and was the peak of the show. They encored with the radio version of “Hearts on Fire;” even the crowd in the balcony was dancing.

Cut Copy’s airy yet hard-hitting blend of new wave electronic rock appeared to be exactly the kind of release Twin Citizens needed after a seemingly immediate switch from summer to fall. It certainly made me feel like Minneapolis had a little more summer to give us. -Chase Turner