Delorean Reaches for (Musical) Ecstasy at Great American Music Hall
Categories: Last Night
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| Delorean last night at Great American |
Lemonade
November 10, 2010
@ Great American Music Hall
Better than: taking drugs at the Cow Palace.
With all due respect to the lovers and survivors of house and trance music, the movement has moved, onward and outward, to bigger sounds and better ideas. Turns out house motifs can add up to more than just sweat and morning-after headaches, as evidenced by Barcelona's Delorean last night at Great American Music Hall. In Delorean's world, dancing is still very much a goal and a byproduct of the unwavering beat -- but where traditional house music masturbates the night away, going nowhere but back to where it started, Delorean searches for the sublime.
All this sound comes from four hombres and tables of soundboards, samplers and looping mechanisms. Buttons, dials and switches are essential to the Delorean live experience (I just can't proceed any longer without making a Christopher Lloyd reference), but there's equal amounts of real-time musicianship: Keyboardist Unai Lazcano took charge of cheerleading duties for the night, rocking his keyboard back and forth like a drunken bullfighter. He vacillated seamlessly between keyboard and sampler manipulation, bending but never breaking his musical cubicle. Drummer Igor Escudeo delivered the strongest live component, splashing clever fills in whenever things started to get redundant -- reminiscent of the counterintuitive, restless percussion of Manitoba-era Caribou.
Lead singer/bassist Ekhi Lopetegi hypnotized but never gospelized, true to the band's recordings. Vocals are just another layer in this democratic experiment, but Lopetegi's assured gaze still betrays a sense of his importance to the project.
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| Delorean |
"Stay Close," the first cut from the band's latest LP, Subiza, and its most celebrated track to date, soaks in the same drama as "Seasun," a dreamscape of beachside dancehalls and urban tropicalia. Next on the album and in the show, "Real Love," felt a bit spaceier than the previous numbers, but never wavered from the trademark Balearic beat. Delorean kept it chronological on the next track, "Endless Sunset" (which follows "Real Love" on the album), continuing the dance/outdoors-on-a-sunny-day vibe. Enough of this paying attention, it was time to get on the floor.
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| Lemonade |
Butterfly Bones: San Francisco's own had an impressive idea going and could be something to watch out for when they flesh out the live sound. The trio relied heavily on the laptop, but what we heard felt fresh. More please.
Setlist -- Lemonade
Hot Funky II
Sinead
Jhodexi
Holograms
Remain in Jah
Lifted
*the closing song is brand new and untitled
Setlist -- Delorean
Seasun
Stay Close
Real Love
Endless Sunset
Deli
Come Wander
Warmer Places
Grow
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It's All Ours (Fruit of Love mix)
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