Get a refund for your taco-flavored pizzas and post-colonial concept albums (see below), because there’s a new force in the Wesleyan music scene that’s giving all its hip-hopponents a run for their money. That’s right, I’m talking about Wesleyan’s favorite supergroup, the valiant Duchampion.
Prior to this past weekend, I had disregarded the vast majority of the predictable musical happenings at Wesleyan with any healthy hipster’s dose of apathy; however, after incessant urging from my fellow audiophiles and sound enthusiasts, I finally witnessed the legendary Duchampions perform at Eclectic this past Friday. And indeed, it was a phenomenal show, though it took me some time to adjust to their unprecedented approach to music.
What is so startlingly unique about this fresh-faced band? Well, before Friday evening, all I had been told about Duchampion was that they were a veritable Wu-Tang-Clan of the Wesleyan campus, featuring an all-star team of Wes ’10 musicians; given this description, I found their music to be a refreshing twist on the aforementioned Clan. This was by far the most unconventional hip-hop show I’ve ever witnessed. Perhaps the most unsettling aspect of their music was the use of full “rock band” instrumentation, featuring drummer Jake Nussbaum as a welcome alternative to the hackneyed synthesizer. Though his complex beats and rapidly varying tempos made it exceptionally difficult to “grind” up against my “biddies,” I found the occasional head thrust to be quite rewarding. Moreover, despite Will Brant’s electronic influence satiating my instinctive need for computer-generated noise, his intriguing bass lines made my hip gyrations resemble a confused beached marlin trying to find the downbeat. The moves I’d spent months perfecting in the WestCo Café were of no use here.
Beyond this obvious lack of the customary techno “untz,” the band’s vocalists, Asa Horvitz and Ben Seretan, continued to innovate the realms of hip-hop, with remarkable results. Their rhymes were delivered with deliberate, melodic phrasing, recalling T-Pain’s earlier work, but with a striking lack of auto-tune. Perhaps Jay-Z’s visionary “D.O.A” is truly coming to fruition in the voices of this intrepid group, as his prophesied “death of auto-tune” succumbs to a rebirth of live, authentic singing. The interplay between Horvitz’s Q-tip-like tenor and Seratan’s O.D.B.-ish rasp and occasional yelping works to great effect, like a fated joining of forces (A Tribe called Wu-Tang?).
I challenge anyone to defy the boundaries of hip-hop further than these Duchampion lads, as they have singlehandedly turned my preconceptions of rap upside-down. I look forward to witnessing the exponential progress of these hip-hop pioneers, and I ask that fans of anything from Grandmaster Flash to Soulja Boy see them in action as soon as possible; perhaps on November 29th at the Fishbone Café?