- Going to a gig at Brixton Academy is exciting, and even more so when it's a Friday night. The iconic spot may have since sold a part of its soul to telephone giant O2, but inside, when the lights are down, it retains much of the magic that has long made it one of London's best live music venues. Last Friday, Soundcrash assembled a strong cast of alternative, American beat-heads, headed up by Flying Lotus and MF DOOM. It felt like the show took forever to come around, after the original date was pushed back by almost three weeks. When May 1st finally landed, the afternoon brought with it more unfortunate news: DOOM had pulled out, replaced by another of hip-hop's elusive personalities, Jay Electronica. However predictable, it was a blow.
Maybe he felt the need to give the fans that extra 10% in DOOM's absence, but Jay Electronica seemed in a particularly hyperactive mood when I entered the packed auditorium. Bellowing "I'm the real MF DOOM," he tore up and down the stage, spitting rapid, barely audible lyrics over booming drum breaks. Moments later, barely 15 minutes into his set, he turned his attention to the crowd, inviting those in the front few rows to join him on stage. As they did so, clearly against the will of the now-narked security team, Electronica repeated over the mic, "yo, he's with me! He's with me!" Standing there with roughly 40 fans around him, all practising their rowdiest hip-hop dancing, Electronica slipped back into performance mode, dropping underground classic "Exhibit C." There was something punk about the scene, and his shouts of "I don't give a fuck!" and "I didn't come here for security, I came here for you" felt sincere (even if they were interspersed with Instagram selfies).
Ten minutes into this madness, a tall figure emerged, frantic, on stage, talking in Electronica's ear. It was Flying Lotus, telling the rapper to calm down and get these people off the stage. As he'd explain later, "we got too much expensive shit here for all that fucking around!" FlyLo was referring to the huge, white, cuboid pod behind him, which, along with his crashing, low-slung beats, was the undeniable star of show.
Standing on a raised platform inside, silhouetted and wearing day-glo neon glasses, FlyLo hurtled through his back catalogue, never playing a song for more than two minutes. Meanwhile, the pod lit up in a thousand fluorescent colours, as his two visual artists, Strangeloop and Timeboy, reacted in real time to the music's every shift. It was a stunning, engrossing spectacle, and it made every new track, every new drop, that much more explosive. "Massage Situation," the Kendrick Lamar-featuring "Never Catch Me" and the theme tune from Final Fantasy 7 never looked and sounded so good. The next day, Gilles Peterson, who'd been to the show, put it brilliantly, describing it "like being a six-year-old at my first fireworks display." Musically, too, Flying Lotus has never made more sense.