The year is 3030 AD. As our planet lies in ruins, the hopelessly corrupt world government is trying to suppress one of the last vestiges of free speech and liberty: hip-hop. It seems like all hope is lost, but fear not! Our hardy protagonist and lyrical wunderkind is here to save the day with fresh rhymes. I am talking, of course, about Deltron 3030, the first ever hip-hop concept album.
Let's rewind back to the year 2000. Hip-hop is already well on its way out of obscurity, and has started rapidly gaining a foothold in mainstream musical culture. As a result it's branching out quite a bit stylistically and thematically, and sprouting a bunch of different subcultures. Around the same time, Eminem is finally enjoying some commercial popularity with his Slim Shady LP, and MC Frontalot is about to coin the term Nerdcore Hip-Hop as a sub-genre for computer geeks and sci-fi enthusiasts.
One of the groups to pop out of this panoply of aural artistry is Deltron 3030, a trio consisting of rapper Del the Funky Homosapien, producer Dan the Automator, as well as turntablist Kid Koala. Their self-titled (and so far only) album is highly unusual for the time, both because of its eerie, operatic soundscapes and its science fiction themed content. Over the course of the LP, we hear the story of Del, a.k.a. Deltron Zero, as he's trying to win the Galactic Rhyme Federation championship before "returnin' to Earth and burnin' some herb."
Deltron's album was a big success, and played a large role in legitimizing hip-hop for the nerd sub-culture, where hip-hop typically isn't very predominant. After their only release, the three members went on to work on Gorillaz' first studio album with Damon Albarn (previously of Blur fame), and Deltron 3030 slowly faded into obscurity. Because of this, I was all the more excited to find out that the trio were active again, and that they would be performing at the Montreal Jazz Festival. So, naturally, Afromullets sent their finest correspondent to the North American continent to document the momentous occasion.
This guy can barely contain his excitement.
Fast-forward again to the present day. I'm hurrying down one of Montreal's main streets, trying to make it to the venue on time. Simultaneously, I'm trying to find the email with my ticket confirmation details on my phone, and racking up a small fortune in roaming costs in the process. A bead of sweat trickles down my cheek in the midsummer evening air, and I reflect on how the weather is both hotter and more humid than Canada has any right to be.
Montreal's International Jazz Festival is the biggest of its kind worldwide, with more than 2 million visitors each year. And right now, it feels like every single one of them is standing in my way as I hastily push my way through the masses. I'm a man on a mission. As the crowd slowly morphs from mid-40s in baseball caps to mid-20s hipsters with V-necks and messenger bags, I know I've almost reached my destination. Five minutes later I'm inside, happily sipping my first beer and making faux-pas with the local tipping culture.
The local warmup band.
The Deltron gig has attracted a fairly diverse crowd. There are lots of hipsters and tattooed eccentrics, dispersed among a sea of nondescript t-shirt wearers inside the old, European-style auditorium that is playing host to the spectacle; nobody I would categorize as stereotypically hip-hop. The opening band are called Nomadic Massive, and they're a local multilingual funk/hip-hop act, headed by a sassy black chick with a great voice. They're giving off a bit of a Fugees vibe and I'm thoroughly enjoying it.
Moving swiftly onward: with the opening act having done their thing, and the crowd being sufficiently hyped, the roadies take over the stage in order to prepare the venue for tonight's main attraction. I see turntables and a MacBook in the foreground, along with a bass guitar, drums, keyboard as well as a string and brass section in the background, which we're later told are manned (and womanned) by one of the local symphony orchestras. Knobs are twisted, cables are adjusted, and it's time for the house lights to go down. The Deltron 3030 logo is projected onto the back wall of the stage and the crowd momentarily goes wild. This is the first real sign we've seen of the hip-hop legends we're about to witness.
Deltron 3030
As the clamor dies down, we hear the plop-plop of a tennis ball being hit back and forth through the speakers, complete with running match commentary. Every time someone scores a point, we hear the deafening applause of the tennis audience, and each time, around a third of the crowd joins in, misguided in the notion that the concert is about to start. They're fucking with us. But soon enough, a shadowy figure enters from stage right and takes his place behind the decks. DJ Kid Koala is in the building, and he starts ripping it up like it's the DMC championships, juggling a bunch of Deltron-themed vocal samples while Dan the Automator quietly sidles in from backstage.
All of a sudden – uh oh – Dan's laptop isn't outputting any sound! Murphy's Law strikes again. This is every musician's and every stage technician's worst nightmare, and I'm sure the three stage-hands who jump in to help are having mini heart attacks at this point. I smile and think back to the numerous occasions on which this has happened to me. God, am I glad I'm not up there right now. Meanwhile, Kid Koala is still hanging on to his intro scratch schtick on the other side of the stage. He's had to grab a third vinyl now because he's run out of new things to do with the first two, but is still bravely soldiering on while Dan and his aides are frantically trying to figure out why the hell this shit ain't workin'.
"Have you tried turning it off and on again?"
Just as I'm starting to think they're going to have to delay the start of the concert, or maybe call an ambulance as one of the techs dies of embarrassment, lo and behold, the problem is fixed, and the concert can run its merry course…
Dan himself is dressed, rather comically, as a concert conductor, complete with baton and tailcoat, and – when he's not fiddling around with his laptop and Tenori-on – he's directing the string and brass sections. (Although they seem to be doing just fine the other 50% of the time when he has his back turned to them.) It seems more of a stage gimmick than a necessary part of the performance, but I'm not going to pass judgment. The visuals being projected on the back wall of the stage are a slideshow of illustrations exhibiting a mixture of psychedelic fantasy creatures and somewhat Jules Vernian sci-fi contraptions, which fits well with the general atmosphere of the gig.
Above: Dan the Conductor. Below: Visuals
The concert feels like a song-for-song recital of their original album. Barring a small handful of exceptions, the performance includes no new material – but since the songs are meant to be listened to in sequence anyway, I guess this is hardly surprising. The string section is barely audible, and honestly I probably wouldn't have noticed a difference if they weren't there. The brass section was a little more entertaining, if only because the trombone girl seemed to be having the time of her life. I'm surprised she managed to accurately hit the notes with all the head-bobbing she was doing. Then again, maybe she didn't – the brass section wasn't a whole lot louder than the strings.
The brass section.
I think you see the pattern that's starting to emerge here: while fun, a lot of the extra elements in the performance seemed superfluous and gimmicky. I feel like having just the three main guys on stage with their equipment would not have diminished the music in any way, and may even have given the performance a more intimate feel. Still, the whole night was a bucket of fun, helped in no part by the godawful American beer they serve at the bar. (For $2 extra, you can get the "deluxe" option, which means a Heineken instead of a Bud Light, but I'm on a budget.)
Above: DJ Kid Koala Below: Audience member taking a photo.
As the concert draws to a close, the band plays an unreleased (yay!) track off their new album, rumored to be in the works since around 2006. But it's definitely, positively coming out later this year. Maybe. The band leaves, but everyone's having too much fun to see them go just yet, and of course everyone on and in front of the stage knows the band's not going anywhere without at least another song. The crowd yells for an encore, and it's an encore they get.
Above: A job well done. Below: Happy Dan.
The time it takes for Del and his homeboys to return to the stage is about equivalent to the lifespan of a hastily smoked joint. This will become relevant later on. The song they play is – wait for it – Clint Eastwood. For the uninitiated, Deltron 3030 is said to be the album that inspired Damon Albarn to create Gorillaz as a side-project to Blur, and the unmistakable voice in the rap chorus of Clint Eastwood is none other than that of Del himself. Back when that album came out, I had it on repeat for several weeks, so I'm quite excited about this surprise performance. Sadly, it doesn't quite live up to my expectations: there's no Damon Albarn singing the main part, but I don't particularly have a problem with that. What I do have a problem with is that Del now seems quite wasted, and is forgetting about half of his lyrics. Been a while since you performed this song, huh, Del? But even this I would be willing to overlook, were it not for the fact that they don't include the awesomely groovy piano chords in the second rap verse. In my opinion, this is the best part of the song. There's a keyboard player right there on stage for Christ's sake, and it doesn't exactly take an Oscar Peterson to get the part right. C'mon, guys, are you telling me you were so caught off guard by having to perform an encore – at a concert you were the main act for – that you didn't find the time to practice it first? I'm not buying it.
I leave the concert hall feeling happy yet vaguely unsatisfied, and make my way to a McGill house party where people are drinking themselves senseless. Of course, my phone decides that this is a great moment to stop working, and I instead find myself lost in Montreal's flamboyantly gay quarter, trying to extract directions from an old Chinese grocery store lady who speaks broken French and no English. But that's a story for a different day.
Overall, the concert was a great time for everyone involved, even taking into account all the minor boo-boos that were perpetrated over the course of the performance. Kid Koala was certainly in top form, and Del was at least decent. I can't accurately assess the performances of Dan and the rest, since it was mostly hard to tell who was doing what, and in some cases whether they were doing anything at all. If you "buy" the album and listen to it (which, by the way, I would heartily recommend to all readers), you will probably have an equivalent or greater musical experience. But of course you will have missed out on the excitement of seeing one of the seminal music making groups of the early 2000's in their element.
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