Get Your Hybrid Groove On

Hybrid Groove Project @ Metro Gallery, Baltimore, MD
Sunday, July 20, 2008

Brian Sacawa: saxophones
DJ Dubble8: turntables, electronics

The Hybrid Groove Project brought its unlikely and deeply thought out pairing of modern composed music with a hip hop sense of the re-mix to the clean, modern lines of the bar-meets-art-gallery of the Metro for a luminous set of genre and pretense shattering music.  Fresh off the sensation of their "new music dis song" dropped onto the interwebs courtesy of Sounds Like Now HGP set to the work of bringing its own beef to the streets of Bmore.  

Philip Glass's Music in the Shape of a Square takes on new shapes as the raw materials of the classic minimalist work are refracted through the prismatic imaginings of two turntables and a saxophone.  The addition of a digital delay with the saxophone added a color to this sound that was promising - and reminiscent of Terry Riley's tape-delay saxophone marathon performances.  

As the set progressed, a relaxed, loose feel began to take hold as Sacawa and Spangler dug deeper into the grooves they crafted.  The long take on Spangler's Pastlife Laptops and Attic Instruments - a piece familiar to these ears - was the strongest interpretation I've heard.  There was an audible comfort level achieved with this performance that hints at where this Hybrid direction can go when the ideas and convictions of heady beats and compositions fall into place.