Seeing Das Racist and BRAHMS together at Pianos on Tuesday night was like eating Cooler Ranch Doritos for dinner and ice cream for dessert. Das Racist popped with artificial flavoring worth licking off of your fingers and BRAHMS followed with a more refined, smooth treat. An odd pairing to be sure, but one that I would recommend without hesitation.
After a DJ lead-in and unintelligible shouting started their set, Victor Vasquez and Himanshu Suri introduced themselves. “We’re Das Racist, and this is our last song!” That wasn’t the truth, but also wasn’t far from it. Das Racist bumped through a very quick set, drawing from their recent mixtape Shut Up, Dude and eschewing their most popular song, “Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell.”
“Turntablism!” shouted Suri, taking a break from rapping between songs to scratch on his DJ’s record plate. “One of the five elephants of hip-hop!”
“Babar, Dumbo,” he listed, “the elephant in the room, and the Oakland A’s elephant. Shit.” He looked up drunkenly for some help. “What’s the last one?”
“Babar!” shouted someone in the crowd.
“We already said Babar. Pay attention!” replied Suri. “The others ones are Ganesh and the Republican elephant. Shit, that’s six.” A brief pause. “The six elephants of hip-hop!”
It was a fitting interlude for a fun-times drunkrap outfit that seems to be making up the rules as they go along. The set was a mess in the best way possible, a reverb-drenched, high-energy dance party featuring rap antics from a bunch of kids smart enough to know when they’re living the dream. Were drugs involved? Yes. Were the lyrics only semi-recognizable? Yes. Was it fun anyway? Yes.
Sneakily intelligent though they may be, Das Racist is a party band that will probably never shake that reputation. I get the feeling they’re alright with that – in an interview with NY Magazine, Vasquez said, “We could have written a structured treatise attacking corporate proliferation. Or we could just say ‘Pizza Hut Taco Bell’ over and over. That shit’s way funnier.” Agreed.
Following Das Racist’s populist entertainment was BRAHMS, a trio that has been making some noise in the indie world as of late. Fronted by Cale Parks – the former drummer from Joan of Arc, Aloha, and White Willliams, as well as an established solo artist – BRAHMS is a tight group that has managed to garner attention with only a handful of tracks in circulation. Their set was an all-too-brief seven songs long without an encore by design; I’m not sure they had another song to play.
I saw Cale Parks play in Boston last August, and described him as “a mad scientist” that was “more like a craftsman than a creator, a paint-by-numbers percussionist.” On Tuesday night he was a completely different animal. Instead of meticulously building songs piece by piece, he cranked out enthusiastic drum beats underneath synths and guitars. He was the heart of the ensemble, getting the crowd rocking without a trace of the busy awkwardness that marked his earlier performances. Parks’ production background is still evident – his drums and cymbals were impeccably mixed and crystal clear – but it seems he has found a fuller sonic landscape that allows him to relax.
Parks can step back because the rest of the work is in capable hands. Eric Ludwick and Drew Robinson take care of details, shredding guitars and pounding keys. The band worked as a complete organism, a wall of sound that weighed each instrument equally. On “Toward the Ghost,” guitars and bass mingle to move the song forward. On “Subtext Is Deadly,” the drums and drum machines take control. No matter what song they were playing, though, one thing was clear: BRAHMS looks like a band that’s going somewhere fast.
