Gramatik / Haywyre / Balkan Bump

Ignatius Feb 23, 2019

Balkan Bump was fun. Great trumpet playing, nice selection of songs, and he joined Gramatik for quite a bit of time and held his own up there. Jump Around faded into a Turn Down For What buildup, but just went back to Jump Around instead of dropping. Also Drop It Like It's Hot, Talk Dirty To Me and Somewhere Over the Rainbow. I would complain about how much playback was used. It's like the sources of his sound were a glorified spacebar and sometimes a trumpet too, leaving him to be his own hype man half the time. Kinda weird.

OH MY GOD Haywyre! Dude can play a keyboard! He had so many great synth tones including a mo'fuckin' slap bass solo. I saw him hitting an arpeggio in perfect time as if it was an arpeggiator but it was those magic hands. He had his keyboard sloped down away from him so that the audience could clearly see the keys, and a camera pointed at them which would display on two sets of screens, to make damn sure you could see the magic happen with your own eyes, and it was flawless. In a weird way I feel like he is the EDM version of Franz Liszt. Definitely going straight on my Pandora, probably on my iTunes soon and I'll count the days until he blows my mind in person again. I recognized the song I Am You, and the Smooth Criminal remix was hitting me like lightning strikes, with power and precision. Thank you for that, Haywyre. See you again soon.

So yeah. As I expected, Future Crypto does much more for me live. Still a quirky one but I'll probably go ham to it more often from now on. Was living for Satoshi Nakamoto. LOVED the GRiZMATiK songs, (Digital Liberation Is Mad Freedom!!!) Expect Us with Balkan Bump, (that's where the mood REALLY started to hit me. Loved the Guy Fawkes masks which lent meaning to the song title) the call/response section of Good Times Roll, Aymo, Illusion of Choice, and topping it off with Voyager Twins, which I was most looking forward to. I also had no idea that the sample in War of the Currents is "Learn bout somethin", and now I love that song even more.