Outside Event 2

I went to see the Bristol experimental trip-hop band "Portishead" at the Berkeley Greek Theater in late October. It was a phenomenal performance by one of my favorite bands, who are very much reliant on technology for their signature sound: drum machines, samplers, vintage analog keyboards, and scratch turntables.

But what really made the show memorable was the fantastic visual presentation. Unlike most big rock concerts- Portishead play mellower, subdued, hypnotic electronic music and since there isn't really a "front" person in the band, their stage presence is kind of underplayed with minimal stage lights and is instead back-lit by a gigantic LED screen. This screen plays grainy footage and strange camera effects for much of the show and makes the band look like a haunting gang of black ghosts in the foreground.

It wasn't until the gritty, digitally-decayed footage of drums and cymbals and guitars that accompanied the opening notes of the song "Hunter" that i started to understand what was going on with the awesome visuals. There were two young men off to the side of the main stage who would occasionally run out and touch what appeared to be mounted digital cameras. I quickly realized that this is exactly what they were doing. I also noticed that there wasn't just one digital camera- there were nearly 20 of them surround every member of the band on stage. The footage was being edited, looped, visually treated/manipulated and screened in real time. When guitarist Adrian Utley bent down to change a guitar effects pedal- his image followed in perfect time on the screen only there appeared to be about a hundred of him in a row. These effects kind of resembled the cheezy in-camera effects utilized in early video editing, music videos, and cable-access commercials in the 80's and early 90's.

And yet, the entire effect was really impressive looking and very much stylized. The video artists had obviously been doing this kind of thing for a long time and their unique visual style was an important (and consistently stylish) part of the entire show. I had a hard time finding good footage of the video at the Berkeley show- but they had the same kind of video editing at work during the performance of this same song earlier in the tour at their England "All Tomorrow's Parties" music festival performance:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPsi6QcFs6U&feature=related

keep in mind that at the Berkeley show they played on a much larger and much darker stage, and their LED screen was about twice as big as the one in this video. It really made for a surreal and unusual-looking performance. The videos had a cold, deteriorated, security camera-quality to their appearance and it greatly enhanced the entire experience.