TOTALLY ENORMOUS EXTINCT DINOSAURS, REDINHO and EGYPTRIXX at the Beauty Bar. Rating: NNN
For a moment I felt like I was flashing back to the 90s candy raver days when a dude in a dinosaur costume took the stage at Beauty Bar Backyard and started cranking out some banging dance beats.
Up-and-coming UK producer Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs obviously wants to steer away from taking a too-serious approach to electronic music, and the goofy costume definitely seemed to help the crowd let their inhibitions down a bit and hit the dance floor.
Like most of the acts on this bill, TEED opted to perform his own tracks live, rather than DJ, which seems to be rapidly becoming the norm for young producers.
As crowd pleasing as his set was, his actual music was relatively conventional electro house, and not that inspiring.
In contrast, Redinho’s genre-bending performance just before him was quite inspiring, and incorporated an actual talk-box to achieve an old school version of that robot-voice Autotune sound that you hear everywhere these days.
The rise of dubstep seems to be inspiring producers in other genres to change tempos more, instead of pounding away at 130 BPM all night, which helps keep things interesting.
Here’s a video of Redinhho.
Closing out the night was Toronto’s Egyptrixx, who’s been gaining a lot of steam over the last couple years. His sound these days is a lot darker than the acts he was sharing the stage with, and more rooted in techno.
Unfortunately, the crowd had been primed for big basslines and melodies, and he may have been a little too deep for this particular dance floor. Considering the large number of gigs he’s scheduled to play over the fest, he’s sure to be playing for some more receptive crowds over the next few days.
