Slynk (photo: Blake Morneau)
By Blake Morneau
A few days before his show at The Gallery in Victoria, Vancouver resident Slynk posted on his Facebook page that he was full of knots after a long stint of touring and needed a massage to get himself right. Being able to read and understand basic things like Facebook status updates, I quickly realized that I should hook him up with my massage therapist friend; a big EDM fan who has studied the specific muscle groups DJs use most in their sonic escapades.
Well, it worked and Slynk got his massage the day before he came across the water to spin. Maybe Slynk would have been great without the massage, we’ll never know. But he was definitely in top form with the massage, and I’d like to think it played some kind of vital part in allowing him to do all that fine scratching he had on display.
It was a crushingly fun performance full of typical happy, funky Slynk-like fare; hard funk bass-lines, happy vocal samples and, of course, Slynk himself, unassuming as ever behind the boards during his nearly two-hour funk-a-thon that had the small, dance-hungry crowd sweating en masse. The people were one sweaty, ghetto funk mess that cheered with nearly each and every track selection Slynk made using his consistently impressive judgment (Slynk’s own “We’re Having a Good Time” and Gramatik’s “Obviously” were two personal favourites). The crowd stuck through and danced hard even as the man slowed the beat down a bit, getting heavier and more dense than I think anyone really expected. It was not an unwelcome surprise.
By the end of the slimy dance-a-thon Slynk orchestrated, I was fairly certain he had established himself as untouchable Funkasaurus Rex. But from the depths of Denver comes Bobby C Sound TV, who might as well just changed his name to Funkzilla. Celebrating his homeland’s birthday he opened with a little bit of Jimi Hendrix’s classic rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” which he segued into an unending all-out funk assault. The hardness of Bobby’s funk caught me completely off guard.
A variety of visual edits accompanied Bobby C’s set (I assume that’s the “TV” part of his stage name), ranging from hilarious, to puzzling, to adorable, to just plain bizarre. They included Hendrix playing the aforementioned anthem, a series of pugs dressed in various wigs and costuming and, for some reason, an old lady licking an ice-cream cone, which paired with the very real girl dancing onstage kind of split the brain in two.
The visuals were a welcome change of pace from mostly watching someone stand and move his arms, but thankfully Bobby C’s music was front and center, and good enough on its own to carry the dance load.
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