Porno Galactica hit the big stage first. This sibling act consisted of one brother, Philip Rabalais, manning the computer and the other, Dominic Rabalais, man-handling the audience. The term man-handling isn’t used lightly either; people were getting pulled on-stage whether they wanted to go or not. The amount of energy brought to the crowd by Porno Galactica was tremendous. It seems they put as much weight on the music played as they do on the audience experiencing the music, as is reflected in the dedication of one-half of the act solely to pump up the attendees at a show.
Their whole performance seemed geared to make people get crazy and move around, right down to the foil wrapped letters spelling “Porno” and flashing colored lights behind them. Their electronic melodies were punctuated by sharp baselines and even turned Enya into something to dance naughty to. Overall, it was a fun set, but would have been better if the audience had bought into some of their crazier tactics.
Next on was Yacht. Yacht isn’t afraid to be weird, and seem to strive to create an unorthodox show. Their show transcends just music, and enables the performers to endorse their ideas about life to the attending audience. Even before Jona Bechtolt and Claire L. Evans came onstage, there were posters up with some deep quotes on life, and beyond. After the first song, involving some interpretive dancing and a background projection of rapidly changing images of Gods, Yacht presented us with a PowerPoint presentation of where they were from, zooming on their street using GoogleEarth, and inviting everyone to stop by if they were in town.
As they continued with their set, there was a short intermission in between a couple of their songs where they led a “repeat-after-me” session. This required the audience to chant the Yacht ideals back to them, prompting a girl behind me to ask, “Is this like, a cult?” Although not a cult, Yacht describes itself as a belief system as well as a band, and that’s what they gave the audience. The music went on with interesting dance moves and captivating black and white video projections attached to it. Some may have noticed there was a theme of triangles (so many triangles!) in these clips, as well as in the decorations on stage. The importance of the concept of the triangle is explained on Yacht’s MySpace, which is pretty interesting to browse in itself.
The Hood Internet kept the crowd dancing with their DJ set. They had no unusual gimmicks on their side and kept it simple with two guys working the computer to keep the dance party going. These guys knew how to make the crowd happy, playing songs people just want to dance to. Their mixing skills are impeccable as they manipulated one song to flow into another. Canopy’s floor turned into a churning sheet of people and glow sticks, moving together and apart with the music flowing through them. The Hood Internet was a great time letting people get down to some of today’s new and yesterday’s forgotten dance songs.
People got to keep on moving later in the night with RDJ2’s beats. Only this DJ switched it up by ditching today’s favorite MacBook for old school turn-table equipment. He even answered the eternal question “What is the DJ actually doing back there?” by switching the camera to his controls as he fiddled with them to produce his relaxed, jam-out beats. The crowd appreciated his effort and even applauded it on several occasions. The music was matched to background projections of remixed clips from obscure movies, including images from a Bollywood film and a movie in which a man’s own hand seemed to be trying to kill him rather violently. RDJ2’s show was a bit more relaxed than The Hood Internet and provided a good end to the lineup at Canopy, leaving the crowd danced-out and satisfied.
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