By: Bob Mandich
Schubas Tavern is considered one of the more intimate venues to see music in the city of Chicago and on this night intimacy met bass and the results couldn’t have been more satisfactory. Once again when you thought you had nothing to do on a Friday night (and you were feeling pretty pathetic about it) the fine folks at Silver Wrapper had you covered and brought 2 amazing up-and-coming electronic artists to salivate those dancing glands. Phutureprimitive has been touring across the country with support from Unlimited Gravity in support of his 2 part EP series “Searching for Beauty in the Darkest Places”. Labeled as the ‘Dance Out Your Demons Tour’, these 2 producers looked to purge Schubas of all evil spirits, and shake a couple booties in the process.
Unlimited Gravity kicked things off with some heavy wobbles that got the early crowd fired up, this was definitely one of those shows where you wanted to see all the performers. The Lakewood, Colorado native kept dropping bomb after bomb, each one with a little more stank on it than the one before. He played a bevy of bangers that kept the crowd shaking from beginning to end, his collaboration with Denver, CO’s Project Aspect was definitely one of the highlights of the set. The epic build which shows off both producers’ unique sounds has a drop that’s even sweeter (or grosser, it’s all about preference) and served as the nights first serious eruption of sound. Towards the end of his set he dropped a remix of the very popular “Radioactive” by Imagine Dragons and the crowd was eating it up! The smash radio hit was given a more slowed down yet dancey groove that just made it easier to belt out the lyrics word for word. When his set was nearing its end it was almost as if he didn’t have nearly enough time, but you could probably blame that on his A.D.D…
Right before Phutureprimitve’s set was about to start, the producer also known as Rain encouraged everybody to go to the merch booth, tear a piece of duct tape, write a fear that they had on the tape and then tape it to the bottom of your shoe so that we could all dance out our demons together. From that moment on the entire crowd moved as one for the remainder of the show. The very unique sound of Phutureprimitive’s music has a way of entrancing you. Songs like “Enemy”, “Cryogenic Dreams” and “Xotica” had the crowd dancing with a real intensity and vigor that showed just how powerfully deep bass music can be felt. Rain never took his foot off the gas and as the show kept going the room got hotter. Another unmistakable characteristic of Phutureprimitive’s music is that it is, quite frankly, sexy. “The Changeling” is the perfect example as there were many bodies being pressed against each other during this song. It’s the type of song you can get lost in, especially in the warm embrace of a lover. His remixes of “Mad World” by Gary Jules and “Teardrop” by Massive Attack nearly shook the foundation of the building to its core. He encored with a new song that was very upbeat but of course had Rain’s signature sound. The crowd was definitely feeling it as they did the whole show. When the music stopped and the dancing was over you might have been surprised to find that tape at the bottom of your shoe was no longer there. We all, in fact, danced out our demons. To be honest, I’ll take a Phutureprimitive show over a Catholic confessional every day of the week!
Caught his show with Minnesota last year at Bottom Lounge. Bummed to have missed this show, but it sounds like he brought the ruckus!