Whoa, it doesn't pay to do a show and then try and come to work ... Stewart Walker and Greg Schiff played last night here in Iowa City, to a small but maniacally appreciative audience; it was interesting to watch them use the same setup and come out with fairly different results -- Schiff was on the whole more melodic, sort of techno by way of deep house, and Stewart was relentlessly, rigorously minimalist.
Local DJ Herbert played angry, starting off with banging techno. I then did my current live-sampling, baffle-the-ravers set -- why do straight ahead techno with Stewart and Greg on the bill? I've said it before and I'll say it again -- Stewart Walker has gone further towards perfecting the performance of techno live than anyone else I've ever seen. So much so that he really sounds like a different artist than the one that makes his records -- he wants to engage a dance audience fully when he's in front of them, and his records are smoother, more reflective. Greg's stuff really got to people too -- he seemed to have the housier half of the crowd eating out of his hand, whereas Stewart had the techno heads at hello. The crowd wasn't very big, but for a monday night in a town of 50,000, it was decent. Except for the banging sound system, I could have done the party in my basement.
