“Ravesploitation, that’s what they’re calling it out here,” says MC MAC SWELL over the phone from Los Angeles. “I like it, TD doesn’t like it so much.” On the road as BIG DIGITS, the Boston duo are in the middle of a West Coast tour that includes shows in San Diego and Los Angeles and five shows in the Northwest corridor. And “Ravesploitation” is being defined as live dance acts that can be confrontational and edgy. After playing with the likes of CAPTAIN AHAB and SAN SERAC, Mac and TD have been asked to contribute to a compilation on — wait for it — Ravesploitation Records, an offshoot of LA’s Death Bomb Arc. “It combines rave culture and live dancy bands,” says Swell, “lots of vocoder singing.” DBA, a monthly tape-club label, has already issued a Big Digits single. “We’ve got a tape with two songs on it, and a lot of noise and feedback,” explains Swell with a laugh. “We’d like to get signed to a label, so we have distribution and money for production, but right now I’m fine producing on my laptop.”
So far, the Ravesploitation tag has caught on only in Los Angeles. “LA is really really a lot of fun, they get buck-wild out here,” says Swell. “They were dancing on our first song, and by the second song there was a mosh pit.” Big Digits played the Smell, an all-volunteer, all-ages, vegan-friendly art club in a depressed area of downtown LA. “It’s a former auto garage and a totally DIY independent space. We’ve played there before, but this time there were three times as many people and everyone was rocking out from the time the first beat was laid down. On the last song TD and I jumped into the crowd and someone came up behind me and lifted me up and dragged me around by my feet! I’ve done that in Boston and gotten high fives, but no one’s aggressively come after me and pushed me around!”
You might say the night was a success. “We sold a lot of merch and T-shirts. Some guy came up to me, gave me his card, and was like, ‘I direct music videos and you guys have a fresh new sound,’ very LA kind of guy. I said, ‘We’re from Boston,’ and he says, ‘You’ve got to be kidding!’ He was kind of upset.” Check the Big Digits download page at www.compound440r.com for their latest track, “Why Did You Reject My Steve Perry Fan Fiction?” Their next gig is February 17 at Bill’s Bar, with We Are Wolves, Mules, and Mahi Mahi.
Somewhere deep in the maze of streets behind Inman Square, a scene came out to welcome back one of its creators. Boston house progenitor SHANNON SHALAKO was back last weekend; deep in a basement, amid the wood-paneling and the fake-flickering candlelight light bulbs, a full-on dance club was jammed into a broom closet, replete with floor lighting, booming bass and . . . pole dancing? Yup. Shalako, one-time resident of the Loft, Boston’s long-gone after-hours dance club, was happy to be back. With a pirates-and-booty theme percolating, he held court in one corner beneath a flight of rickety stairs, with DAN PALUSKA and HEEMINLYANG from the UNLOCKED GROOVE crew bending his ear. Other Boston luminaries making an appearance were KC HALLETT, RODNEY MARABLE, JON SCHMIDT, BRYNMORE and CRAIG KAPILOW, who manned the decks for a solid set of chunky house tunes. “CHANDLER (DELINKS) and I were just talking about how inspiring the music scene is here,” Shalako says. “I don’t want to say it’s competitive, but people are always pushing good taste here. It’s hard to find such a concentration of good music.” Shalako ended up in San Francisco, where he’s DJ’d a few times around town but has yet to settle into a groove. “It’s very fragmented by genre there. I dig events when all music is out and representing, but I’ve only been there a year and a half.” A full 20 mixes of from Shalako can still be found at www.redlightmusic.com. . . . Sunday sees two hip-hop promoters from last week’s column with local shows. CHAOS bring his live flow to Sauce in Davis Square, and “Beyond the Beat II,” at Hoffa’s in Harvard Square, features the skills of TERMANOLOGY, SLAINE, and bubbling-under über-talent LETIA LAROK.
David Day spins Fridays at Enormous Room and hosts Free the DJ Wednesdays at ZuZu
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On the Web:
Big Digits: //www.bigdigits.com
Compound 440R: //www.compound440r.com/
Shannon Shalako: //www.redlightmusic.com
E-mail the author:
circuits@squar3.com
