Mummy Fortuna Theatre Company, Sage Francis, Sole (of Anticon) Plastic People, London EC2 After hooking up with Solo1 and his friends outside the club, Ladycook and I skipped the evergrowing queues and entered the venue. Like before, the place packed out fairly early on but unlike previous occasions, the vibe in the busy room was surprisingly relaxed and nonchalant - - I guess this time around, the devoted Heads that attend these Solexism events had realised that a sage Francis performance, as good as it is, is not the second coming of Christ and if you just chill, he might even be back again for a third European tour. Anyway, for whatever reason, despite there being even more folk than before, (including several who, from their accents, had evidently followed their rhyming hero from across the Atlantic), the room felt less stuffy and crowded with a far more genial vibe amongst all attending. This change in the bustling crowd’s mood was encouraged by the unintrusive music played before, between and after the sets, most of which was anything but hiphop. Without warning or fanfare, a profuse eruption of massive cymbal driven rhythms kicked off what turned out to be a whirlwind set from Brighton’s Mummy Fortuna Theatre Company. Dispensing Very modest, self-effacing banter between massive explosions of enthralling words and sounds, emcee Sketch and his deejay/producer Coops proceeded to unleash half-a-dozen tremendous tracks. No matter whether it was massive arrangements of atmospheric samples or simply a semi-acoustic guitar being played live over one of Coops’s rhythm tracks, Sketch would let rip with an unflagging barrage of truly astounding rapid-fire angst lyrics. Now whilst Sketch dismissed all the material as unfinished "works in progress," each piece felt more like hearing someone’s entire life flashing before you. These guys’ hybridisation of the best of Anticonite leftfield hiphop and the most abstract UK D&B isn’t, understandably, everybody’s cup of tea. Still, once they start putting accessible hooks into their tracks, I’m sure they’ll be destined for bigger things. And then, they were gone. It was then time for the night’s main act to commence ignition sequence – You know the repertoire; same one chair, same one mic and same one CD player setup, but all now commanded with a new air of calm and certainty. Sage Joked about how apt it was for him to be stood beneath a red light and this proved true when the self-proclaimed "Fairy-god-motherfucker" found himself fending off a group of, to say the least, zealous 6 foot tall twenty-something Caucasian males who felt compelled to stand at the front of the crowd so they could shout his lyrics evermore off beat, stroke their god and do that thing that rappers do where they try and flick imaginary bogies off their hand. I’ll never know how confessional lyricists like Sage don’t get freaked out by their Stans and it was interesting to hear these guys shouting with relish, lines like "I spread my love like the legs of a crack whore" - and more eerily, echoing Sage’s verses about his misanthropic introversion. The Self-congratulatory laughter and cheers from members of the crowd after sage’s political commentary did start to get as annoying as those who feel it necessary to laugh at the porter scene in Macbeth every time they see it performed but to be fair, I have heard worse at a Jay-Z show. The notable difference here being that in this crowded basement, there was no where to go to escape someone shouting "you’re so right" in your ear for forty minutes. Anyway, I digress… there was a mixed response to Sage’s remark that where he’s from, you can’t get away with wearing backpacks, especially not to a club, (I don’t think Plastic People has a cloak-room) - and I don’t think the folk who needed to, were listening too close when Sage performed Gnomes (a track about obsessive fans and goal-hangers from the latest Lexolium compilation). That said, audience participation wasn’t entirely annoying. When Sage got to the end-chorus-till-fade point of Broken Wings, a mellifluous melody began to rise gently from behind me. At first, I took this to be a minor piece of tweaking of the track’s instrumental to take advantage of the club’s superb surround-sound-system but no… Slowly all heads were turned to the centre of the crowd from whence this Beth Gibbons-esq euphony was emitting… Apart from Climb Trees, his Simon Says parody and Different (which descended into a mockery of rapper’s over-reliance on "r’haha…uh-huh-a’huh-a’huh" adlibs), this night’s playlist not only lacked the most lively of his tracks but also avoided the most pensive pieces. Whereas his debut performance was about establishing himself in the UK by performing as much of his work as posssible, this abridged set was used by Francis to tackle pertinent current affairs. Indeed, the overt political theatrics of his debut appearance were replaced with a restrained, yet still heartfelt series of acapella poems about "The master" and about how he found God in a library. Apparently, in the ideal world of this "concave man," "I’m being stalked by Natalie Portman… and she’s still 14 years old… and it’s OK…" I don’t know whether it was by conscious design or a desire to avoid reliving the frustrations he encountered with the venue’s CD-player during his maiden UK appearance – either way, this set was dominated by acapella recitals. Up until that night, I would have thought that an Acapella interpretation of inherited scars would lack something in the absence of DJ Mayonnaise’s beautiful saxophone driven instrumental . Anyway, the many different rhythms and switch ups in phrasing took on new life when set free from the beat. Sage’s breathless repetition of the refrain "pain and hurt is relative! Pain and hurt is relative…" rang out around the room like each syllable was a bell being pealed. Following a decent freestyle and the performance of an EVERMORE extended Emperor’s New Clothing, proceedings were left hanging when Sage announced that Runaways was to be his final song. Runaways is a great, if albeit disconsolate track and so it didn’t feel right to end on such an ambivalent note… But of course that wasn’t the end. It wasn’t long before Sage got back into position to kick the one song we’d all been waiting to hear that night. Knowing that his audience would demand an encore, Sage saved the best till last and performed Makeshift Patriot. By this point in proceedings, Sage decided to appease his most avid fans, aiming the mic out toward the audience so they can do all the punchlines they’d been dying to shout all night. The Sage Francis show came to a genuine climax when he dismounted his chair declaring "the show is over! This show is over!" to the sound of that classic Juice-Crew diss by Boogie Down Productions. When Anticon’s head honcho and hate-figure for geeks in denial took the mic it was clear he needed someone to operate the CD player and that he should have prepared a proper set before hand - But hey! Sole was only doing this show as a busman’s holiday favour before then going off to enjoy his vacation in England. Sole started off his set with the explosive If I Had Won, an impassioned rant set to a golden era up-tempo beat and went on to keep up his frenzied dejection for a further half-an-hour. Like Sage, Sole also has one special tune for which he is most well known. However, unlike the target of THAT diss record who is now enlisting his proteges and signing artists to his label to build a legion of skateboard warriors, Sole has the integrity to let it lie and to earn a rep on his own merit. In fact, the only, albeit tenuous reference to this well-old beef that wont lie down and die was made in the opening seconds of his second song, with the lyric "Cut Rupert Murdock’s throat and left with Rawkus trying to sign me!" this was one of the opening lines from his self-deprecating rant Da Baddest Poet where he then encouraged the crowd to join in with the chorus "White people are the devil". That hook, was, if it were possible, a less subtle counterpart to Pip Skid’s "White people! White people! Wave your arms in the air! White people! White people! Hail Hitler like you just don’t care!" and with performances of True Blue, it wasn’t clear how we were expected to react to Sole’s declaration. Sole’s records give the impression of a deathly earnest and forlorn crank and true, his cup is always half empty. However, following his explanation to the confused audience that nothing said by this unlikely jester is to be taken at all seriously, the audience’s icy apprehension was fast thawed. Subsequently, in contrast to Sage’s sincerity, Sole attempted to undercut every stance he advocated. For instance, in contrast to Sage’s commentary on the anti-American witch hunts, Sole expressed irritation with the massive feed the world, save the rain forest and protect the dolphins lobby – but then someone in the crowd did point out that dolphins do taste mighty fine – and the guy next to him in the audience added that it’s a shame that all those tuna get caught up in the nets. This was all building toward a track where the audience got their lips round the amusing, yet cumbersome chorus "You’re all gonna fry with me/it must be the plutonium in me". Sole remarked that since he has not officially released anything since Bottle Of Humans, people must be attending because they are serious fans and his presumption was born out when many in the audience were keen to demonstrate how their knowledge was word perfect. So, like Sage, Sole also had a significant minority of the audience mouthing all his free-verse rants but this time, the sycophancy was replaced by a more aggressive vibe between fanatics and artist. Whereas Sage was simply touching base, Sole used his debut UK performance to try out a selection from one as yet unreleased and two further little known album’s worth of material. Admittedly, Sole’s set did get a bit shouty when doing stuff no one had yet heard which did not have hooks, and there were a couple times when Sole himself seemed uncertain as when to jump in with his vocals – Still, performances of Respect Pt. 3", I Don't Rap in Bumper Stickers and Year of the $exxx $ymbol were spot on doses of the Anticon cocktail that finds utter self-loathing and supreme arrogance poured over cold rocky beats. Sole put on an excellent show but in the absence of any performances of the several tracks on which he and Sage have worked together, the set lacked a clear conclusion. - Sumo Kaplunk | profile  Related Links: a long ago ukhh interview with sole ukhh’s 2nd chat with the man 1st Sage Francis UK gig MFTC Review © ukhh.com 1999 - 2003