Line-up

Headliner
STS9 Last time in Detroit: 8 years ago

Venue

Royal Oak Music Theatre

318 West 4th Street, 48067, Royal Oak, MI, US

www.royaloakmusictheatre.com/

Capacity: 1,700

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Additional details

Doors open: 19:00

Concert in your area for Electronic.

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STS9 biography

Sound Tribe Sector 9, otherwise known as STS9, are an instrumental collective, combining the likes of dub, funk, psychedelic and electronic influences to produce experimental and awe-inspiring masterpieces.

Originating from Atlanta US, STS9 consists of Hunter Brown (guitar/midi-keyboard), Jeffree Lerner (percussion/handsonic), David Phipps (keyboards), Zach Velmer (drums) and Alana Rocklin (bass guitar), who replaced David Murphy after his departure from the band in January 2014. STS9 have released 13 albums in total, two of which are remixed albums (‘Artifact: Perspectives’ and ‘Peaceblaster: Make it Right Remixes’), and two live DVDs on their own label 1320 Records. In 2005, STS9’s album ‘Artifact’ charted at number 12 on Billboard’s Top Electronic Albums whilst their 2011 EP ‘When the Dust Settles’ achieved the top spot on the iTunes Electronic Chart and listed in Billboard’s Top 25.

STS9 have headlined festivals such as Lollapalooza and Wakarusa, and shared the stage with Jay-Z, Snoop Dogg and Nas, whilst maintaining a position consistently in Pollstar Magazine’s chart of top-grossing touring acts. The quintet have contributed towards a number of non-profit organizations throughout the band’s lifespan; for instance, STS9 hosted a concert for the victims of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and raised $20K. They also used renewable energy to power their concerts on the Live as Time Changes tour and commuted across the USA in a carbon neutral tour bus, hoping to offset 100% of their carbon emissions due to the Renewable Energy Credits gained from partnerships with environment-friendly organizations such as Green Mountain Energy.

Comparable to The Disco Biscuits, Eat Static and Galactic, STS9 are renowned for their mesmerizing rhythms, although they have played under a different name; the band performed three times between 2001 and 2004 under the name Tzoklin, in order to experiment with a different sound, without bearing the audience expectation of hearing STS9 material. The band maintain a worldwide following and demand a particular respect for their musical and ethical commitments.

Live reviews

The show is a 3-hours concert with an intermission. The songs mostly are ~10 minutes long live mashup between two released tracks. STS9 does a good job at improvising on existing melodies without re-hashing their CDs, leaving a nice original feeling.

The light show was pretty lackluster, it clearly felt like they didn't invest any significant time or money into it, relying on the venue existing lights and on a light operator that didn't know much about the set or even STS9 music in advance. I understand that lighting a live jam band is tricky, but I expect more from a music show than just loud music.

About the musician's performance, they were all mostly static on stage, except the drummer that seemed unecessarily agitated given how mellow STS9's music usually is.

All in all I felt like it could have been a seated event as nothing was really done to engage and energize the crowd.

But in my view, the biggest faux pas of the night was the recall after a great When The Dust Settles live interpretation as their final regular set song. I didn't recognize the song(s ?) they played just before leaving the stage for good, and its intensity was way below When The Dust Settles, which should have been thrir recall song in my opinion.

I bitterly left the venue with the opinion that I would rather have seen Skydyed (a local Colorado eloetro-funk-rock band available on Spotify-Soundcloud-Youtube) instead of STS9.

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