NXNE Saturday Report #2

HOT
Once Toronto hiphop upstart D-Sisive was through bowling over the horde of label reps from Universal and Sony who had gathered at the Reverb to find out why EMI was so keen on this gangly DeGrassi-obsessed kid, he headed north to Lee's Palace and inadvertantly upstaged Nish Rawks. All it took was one song but the as-yet-unreleased joint called D-Siggy - which cleverly namechecks Canadian towns - is a surefire housewrecker and will almost certainly become a Canuck hiphop anthem as soon as it's put on vinyl. Only bullets can stop D-Sisive now.

Montreal blasters Tricky Woo have now given up their demented Detroit-style riff-rock for a much more organic throb that seems to draw equally from Hawkwind, the Move and Soft Machine. The slam-bam power chording was still present at their Horseshoe showcase but they're now throwing in some interesting shifts in tone and tempo - moving from a brutally loud Mountain-esque boogie one minute to a dubwise pastoral drone the next. The highlights of their tour-ending show were two jams, Fool For Your Loving and High On A Mountain, that appear on a fab Triple X Recordings collection, The Five Fingers of Dr. X, which also features otherwise unreleased songs by the Gaza Strippers, Black Halos and the Streetwalkin' Cheetahs. www.triple-x.com

Evidently Toronto's Manitoba doesn't need a fancy live PA hook-up to rock the house, he did a brilliant job of bridging the enormous stylistic gap between the old-timey hoedown of the Saggy Pants Boyz and the heavy-hitting hiphop of Nish Rawks by spinning a well-paced mix of funky grooves. Be sure to check out Manitoba's next DJ set, this selecta delivers the dope shit.

NOT
Standing stiffly before the microphone on the Horseshoe stage, Jully Black, sounding slightly hoarse, didn't have the vocal power to move the crowd despite the Isaac Hayes-derived thrust of her well-drilled backing band.