GIG REVIEWS

Red Snapper
@ The Foundry, Sheffield
7th November 2000
www.vanguard-online.co.uk

 Red Snapper: "edible fish with sharp fuck-off teeth". Couldn't be a more apt moniker for this collective of jazz-breakbeat modernists. As they enter the Tuesday Club stage without hardly acknowledging the Sheffield crowd, you might think these are a bunch of introspective trip-hopsters (on no, the "T- word"!) supplying some deliciously edible moodiness. And you might be right on the evidence of their Massive Attack-ish "Images of You" number. Karime Kendra, the voice behind said song, snaps back tonight with the "The Rough and The Quick", a cheeky, sleazy little number that would have Jockeyslut magazine hiding behind the censors. This track enters that elite band of songs which mentions "clit" in its lyrics and I for one can only applaud Karime's performance. Especially when she informs the crowd that she used to be a wrestler...

You can't go to a Red Snapper gig without mentioning that double bass of Ali Friend's planted centre stage and rightly so- the bass is quite literally in yer face. This may sound obvious but "Red Snapper" are a dance act who play real instruments. So while you let your feet move, you can actually watch the basslines being created and see the rhythms being laid down in front of you. It's certainly a bit more exciting than dance music's usual spectacle of two shaven-headed blokes twiddling their knobs and nodding their heads furiously. When THAT bass riff booms out on second track "The Sleepless", the discerning but largely static crowd have no choice but to groove, 'specially when the junglist MC DET enters the fray espousing his own brand of jazzy lyrical dexterity. The instrumental tracks can occasionally sound a bit pedestrian but it is the human voice, be it male or female, which really lifts the songs up and gets the floor jumping.

The "fuck off jazz sound" of "Making Bones" is less apparent tonight. Instead, "Their Aim is to Satisfy" and this they do with the newer material's more guitar-led sound. And what a fuckin sound this is. Towards the end of the set, lead guitarist Dave Ayers come into his own. On "They're hanging Me Tonight", "Red Snapper" morph into Spiritualized chasing Syd Barrett round the streets of Derrick May's Detroit. Melancholic, blistering, screaching guitar riffery feeding into a techno cacophony. So, write "Red Snapper" off as trip-hoppers at your peril. Trip-hop doesn't bite: this stuff does.

Cabs and Chrisso