It’s always fun watching a crowd get converted from the cross-armed, shoe-gazing types into the arm waving, dancing-around-like-you-just-don’t-care kind of audience. Austin, Texas’ The Octopus Project started off the night with a crowd who clearly had little interest in seeing anyone that wasn’t Aesop Rock, but they were slowly won over by the bands use of heavy beats backed by layered guitar and the occasional theremin. In between constantly switching instruments and warming up the crowd with their instrumental dance-pop, the group showed an impressive ability to blend layer and layer of noise, while never missing the beat. Towards the end, with songs like “An Evening With Rthrtha” and “Porno Disaster” (which apparently was named after something you wouldn’t expect, but the group wouldn’t elaborate), the band had most of the crowd where they wanted them, captivated by theremin and dancing their asses off.

A review of Aesop Rock’s set and more photos after the jump!

San Francisco by way of NYC (and lets not forget Boston University graduate) rapper Aesop Rock took the stage and slammed out track after track with his notorious laid back, verbose flow. Along with MC Rob Sonic, the duo played cuts from Rock’s newest album None Shall Pass, like “Coffee” (sadly lacking John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats’ vocals) and “Bring Pluto Back,” as well as lots of older tracks that had the crowd attempting to keep up with ‘Sop by singing along. Aesop’s sentences never seem to end and build up into a tense one-sided dialogue that sounds like he is going to run out of air and refuses to stop to take a breath, all backed by impressive beats. Aesop said that, “Some nights this feels like work and sometimes it’s fun and tonight it’s definitely fun”. The man knows how to please a crowd and with just a microphone and a turntable, Aesop Rock proves that, even with tracks that rival The Decemberists for verbosity, you can still bring the audience to it’s knees with the bare essentials of music.

More photos of the show can be found here.

The Octopus Project
Aesop Rock

Tags: aesop rock, photos, show review, the octopus project //