A week after playing to a 10,000-plus festival audience in Osaka, Japan, TNGHT – Montreal's Lunice and Glaswegian Hudson Mohawke – are making their formal North American debut (after melting faces at SXSW earlier this year) with sold out, back-to-back shows in Toronto and New York City.
Hanging out in the green room of Toronto's Opera House, a decidedly unglamorous, painted-stone grotto tucked beneath the stage, TNGHT seem appreciative, though unfazed, by their fast-rising profile. Lighting Marlboro after Marlboro, HudMo even thumbs down the hottest rapper in the game: Early yesterday morning, audio of Kendrick Lamar's interview with the BBC's Gilles Peterson was published, and it included a cheeky but lackadaisical freestyle over TNGHT's "Higher Ground." Peterson introduces the hydraulic production as "the biggest record right now in the dance."
Lunice, pacing the low-ceilinged room, laughs and rebuffs HudMo's hubristic gesture of disappointment with a concession: "At least he threw in the big taxi reference!" (Lamar's opening line: "Riding around town, big taxi/I'm out in London.") There's an obvious air of reverence for Lamar, but jokingly shutting down rap gods is a new luxury this tide-changing duo can afford.
"We didn't expect this kind of response," says Lunice. "The idea was making straight-forward rap tracks from our perspective, which is just influenced by finding things on the internet and non-rap music." Prior to TNGHT, both artists were pursuing well-received electronic-oriented work. Adds HudMo, a pseudo-protege of rap giant Just Blaze: "I think [it's had an effect] because it's just super-stripped down. We didn't give this a big push but it got to people who didn't know much about our solo careers, and a much younger crowd as well, who are just hearing about us now."
TNGHT trades in the greatest of musical pleasures: the superfluous rap banger. Overwrought, hungry get-up anthems that incite an inner clamour and an untethering of limbs and wits. Their music, conceived as and still considered a side project, was created in response to busily arranged commercial hip-hop. It is swarthy and space-filled. It was designed for rappers, but the beats feel so intimidating – even the baby coos on "Bugg'n" –it's unsurprising the five tracks from July's self-titled EP remain pretty much untouched.
A few hours after our conversation, they perform these songs as well as a giddy slew of remixes, solo material and rap anthems. Bodies swirl and swerve and sweat. "Oh Boy" by Cam'Ron – probably the first rap song many attendees ever fell in love with – closes the show. It feels like an exciting moment for the predominately young crowd; a twist on familiar vernacular, expressed explosively.
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