Concert review: ‘Quannum’ brings its artist collective to HOB

By Sean Orfila
On-line Forty-Niner

“Ya’ll are a good crowd, man. We’ve been to a lot of places and ya’ll are a good crowd,” said emcee Lyrics Born during his performance at the House of Blues Sunset Strip last Thursday. Stemming from what has become a fertile tree of hip-hop music – Quannum Projects, a record label and artist collective, appeared on stage together for the first time in Los Angeles for their Quannum World Tour.

With a high-tech accompaniment to their head-nodding hip-hop breaks, DJ Shadow catapulted hip-hop into new realms with a new style of scratching. While emcees pounded lyrics out of the speakers, Shadow scratched both images and sound with two video screens and a DVD-scratch devise.

In another innovative performance, the Lifesavas, an emcee group under the Quannum umbrella, toyed with pre-recorded DVD footage. While an emcee rapped, a DJ scratched the emcee’s voice and image from a DVD. The video scratches enabled the emcee to have a conversation with himself onstage. The performance eventually became a battle between the emcee’s pre-recorded self on DVD and the emcee live on stage.

DJ Shadow, well-known for his profound 1996 album “Endtroducing,” and his musical score for the documentary film “Dark Days,” performed a short solo DJ set. His selection of funky drumming pounded speaker boxes and were received by the intimate crowd with body moves and butt-shaking.

Joining Shadow on stage was Blackalicious, opera trained singer-turned hip hop rocker Joyo Velarde, Latyrx and DJ D-Sharp.

In the beginning of the show, DJ Rev. Shines, of Portland Ore., shared his collection of records with the crowd. His selection included many of the classic ‘60s and '70s funk records that were sampled by DJ Shadow and Lyrics Born for their recent albums. In a few instances, Shines grabbed the microphone and announced the original artist after dropping organ samples and hooks familiar to newer Quannum releases to an open-armed crowd of music lovers.

The tour will make a final stop in San Francisco this week. More information about Quannum Projects is available on their Web site, www.quannum.com.