What’s up Gautamanation!!!
Please enjoy this little slice of music journalism from you favorite hiphop vagabond
Social Espionage and Mayhem @ 529 12.12.2009
So it was feeling like an East Atlanta Village type of Saturday night, my boy Lucas Connor texted me earlier in the week about his group Social Espionage’s first show in Atlanta in over two years. I did a show with Lucas’s other group The Contraverse back in July, and since we’ve tried our best to support each other’s projects, so since I’ve been a little scarce at shows lately I figured it was a perfect chance to break the streak and caught the 87 out of Sandy Springs destination, East Atlanta…
…I got to 529 a little before show time. I bumped into Lucas before things got started, told him I was sorry I hadn’t been able to make it out in a while, he told me I chose the right night to crawl out from under my rock, I agreed with him by nights end. A Yuengling and shot of Beam later, Social Espinonage got to work delivering a full force, audio/visual assault on all those in attendance with the help of some intense visual effects provided by J Smiley…
… I probably lack the music vocabulary to come up with the proper hyphenated, sub-genre, term to classify what I saw and heard so a description al-la Gautama will have to suffice…
… Social Espionage walks a very thin line, and they walk it well. In less masterful hands things like lights and projectors, Laptops and drum machines, mixed with drum-kits, guitars and effect heavy vocals would be the recipe for disaster but where others have tried and failed they succeed. Their opening set had everything from a guitar with a bayonet to bust-your-eardrums bass and synths that make you feel kinda like your memory is being erased courtesy of the very talented Mike Mosca while Lucas ran the gamut from whisper to war cry and everything in between so much was happening on that mic he needed two of them, seriously he had two mics. By the time they took their set break, the crowd needed it, in a good way I mean, even your home town crowd needs a breather when you unleash that kinda onslaught on them…
… Then came the guests, including Charlie P, Obeah and The Santos. Rapid fire raps, death by drums, more guitars, bass, bass, bass, red and green LEDs swirling across the room. I must admit, your boy was a little out of his element, I’m not used to that much stimuli at one time thus my description may sound pretty vague but I promise that’s how it went down…
…By the time Mayhem took over to close out the night with his genre bending assortment of all things bass I knew one thing…
… This is what the party will sound like in the post-apocalypse…
… that’s my kind of party.
more on Social Espionage @ www.myspace.com/socialesp