Slum Village - Arches - 27.07.06
Slum Village came to Glasgow for their J Dilla commemorative tour with a host of Scottish talent as support. As with this site we will concentrate more on these acts.
We arrived for doors opening to the sound of Boom Monk Ben, a regular at Subcity. This set the mood as he chopped and sliced his way through hip-hop, funk and drum & bass. After around an hour the Freakmenoovers continued the great beats and played some new and classic hip-hop tracks which delighted the crowd.
Steg G, Freestylemaster and new signing Cad came to the stage and performed tracks from their album 'Natural Selection'. This is the first time I have seen them perform live together and I was pleased to see that they sounded as good live as they did on the album. The crowd seemed to warm up nicely as Freestyle Master spat his lyrics to 'Schemes' and 'Rise Up' while Cad performed his solo joint 'Get Them'. Steg G, hidden away in the darkness at the back of the stage, impressed with his skills on the decks.
Soon after, Slum Village took to the stage. T3 and ElZhi jumped around the stage whipping the crowd into the frenzy although keyboard player Selfish stole the show from them with his soulful voice. This is of course when you could hear them as throughout their set the microphones lost power as the technical guy's looked a little lost on the desk. This lost some of the momentum of the crowd which began to leave. The turnout was already pretty poor, which was a surprise giving it was only £8 entry, so the place seemed even more empty.
Those who did leave missed a great 15 minutes from Bigg Taj. This one man beat machine amazed the crowd with his skills as some stood there in awe. Freestyle Master even accompanied him with some freestyle raps.
If the night was not already enough, Krash Slaughta came on and kept the night going showcasing his amazing skills.
We left after a few more drinks but did not catch Jae P and Paul N'Jie who I think did not show.
All in all it was a good night despite the technical hiccups and poor turnout.
Review by Chris Torres
You can view photos of the night in our gallery section.
You can view a video of the night in our video section.
