Diplo, Spank Rock offer favela flavor

Freddy Deknatel Arts Editor

Having seen Clap Your Hands Say Yeah a few weeks ago, it's time to put aside those Pitchfork pretensions for the next big ViCE show of the semester, which will put affectionate pho-David Byrne crooning to some dirty shame: Diplo and Spank Rock. DJ Diplo, who spins records from the lost-and-found crates into a funky, hip-hop, dancehall mix, will play the All College Dining Center with DJ duo Spank Rock for what is being billed as an All Campus Party. Four kegs and food will be provided, and the east room of ACDC will do its best imitation of a Rio favela.

The concert was originally planned to take place on the Blodgett Lawn. However, ViCE was notified that the animals in the laboratories beneath Blodgett, under the grass, would be disturbed by loud music, forcing a change of venue. Whether the animals have ‘the rage’ is uncertain, but either way, rattling them with dancehall music might be cruel.
DJ Diplo—or Wesley Pentz from Philadelphia—calls on a South Florida heritage of Miami

Bass and radio hip-hop and freestyles. His mashing and mixing of commercial hip-hop with mainstream pop-songs or long-forgotten yard-sale finds has led him to produce (and date) M.I.A. and, along with DJ Low Budget, be one-half of the Hollertronix DJ collective. He’s also remixed Gwen Stefani’s “Hollaback Girl” for Interscope Records.

Complaints seem to ring in some circles across campus that certain musical affectations have a hold on what bands come to Vassar. This may or may not be true. You may have enjoyed, or shunned, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. But the gap between those self-released summer indie darlings and an opening DJ act whose claim to fame is a 12” titled "Put That Pussy on Me" is marked and vast. Spank Rock’s spinning should well introduce Diplo, as the duos’ own ear for Brazillian favela funk mixed with old-school hip-hop is charged by ’80s pop synths. It should also, along with Diplo, be a refreshing sound sandwiched between September’s Clap Your Hands and the Nov. 4 Death From Above 1979 show.