Feature by Shelby Mehdinia and Tai Carpenter
Martin Staaf, one of bass music’s most prolific producers known as Liquid Stranger melted hundreds of faces after selling out two nights here in Colorado this past weekend. The Bluebird and Fox Theater were blessed to experience the amorphous sounds that were heard from artists Liquid Stranger, Space Jesus and Au5, and we were more than grateful to be apart of this monumental tour! As mentioned in our interview from 2015, Staaf has spent nearly a year readying his latest endeavor, the Wakaan record label. Sounds of Wakaan marks the label’s first official release featuring the current roster, and one listen will make you understand why the tour has been selling out venues night after night! The energy and vibes these three headliners have brought to the masses is seriously on fire!
This two day Colorado run was nothing but a butt shaking party, and in true Liquid Stranger fashion, each performance was freshly unique yet equally as rowdy. Friday night at the Bluebird, Au5 hyped up the crowd with his balance of melodic bass and progressive House productions, giving attendees a nice dose of electro vibes.
Space Jesus gave a bass rattling performance that took on a glitchy hip-hop curve, dropping freshly released tracks like ‘Bob Molly’ and ‘Infinite Extravagance’. Liquid Stranger took show intimacy to a whole new level by live tweeting and taking song requests from the crowd. Some personal favorite highlights of this first set included massive mixes of Grandmaster Flash’s ‘The Message’ and original fan favorites like ‘Rocket Fuel’, ‘Bully’ and ‘Stop’ that made the crowd go nuts.
Now for what was without a doubt the MOST rowdy part of the night came when all three producers hit the stage. Performing a B2B2B set packed to the brim with unreleased bangers both nights, they literally took the crowd away with their INSANE ‘Space Jam’ remix in particular. We found this recording of the dopeness on Youtube. Excuse the quality, but it was pretty – freaking – epic.
Saturday night found us at The Fox Theater in Boulder, a city in which Space Jesus has recently made his new home. Marking his first official ‘hometown’ show, you could tell the producer couldn’t be more excited to grace the Fox stage. He opened with a heavy mix of Dead Prez’ ‘It’s Bigger Than Hip-Hop’ that shook the venue floor, while also taking us on an intergalactic journey through black holes with his unreleased banger ‘M. Night Shambhala.’ An energetic yet honestly unsatisfying set by trap duo K Theory brought drastically different vibes with their set, and though I wouldn’t consider myself a fan, I’ll admit that they were able to make the crowd jump, which is always a good sign, right? Laugh worthy tracks included trapped up remixes of old school raver throwbacks like Deejay Alice’s ‘Better Off Alone’ and Blue Man Group’s ‘I’m Blue’.
Finally, our Wakaan boss Liquid Stranger hit the stage and did not fail to deliver headbangin’ and booty shaking bass, though this set was much more downtempo compared to last nights’. This only goes to show just how versatile and keen on sound design Staaf is, because we’ve yet to experience an LS style we can’t get down to!
Liquid Stranger really brought the right crew with him on this tour, and Colorado can’t wait to have his strange sounds and ridiculous bass back! If you can, we highly suggest catching them at their next show, February 25th in San Diego at the Soda Bar – with only three more shows left for this tour, you can expect Wakaan to go out with a bang.
2 thoughts on “[Show Review] Rise of Wakaan tour gives Colorado two doses of ridiculous bass | February 19th + February 20th”