If we couldn’t “Touch the Sky” before, we certainly can now. Last weekend was something special for fans of livetronica act Big Gigantic, a collective best known for their unique bass heavy shows that span genres and seamlessly integrate live saxophone and drums. Midtown West’s Terminal 5 venue became the boulder-based duo’s NYC home last weekend when Dominic Lalli (saxophone, producer) and Jeremy Salkan (drums) dominated the stage on Friday, March 11th and Saturday, March 12th.
The two never tour without spectacle, and this year’s installment was no different. It had been a while since I’ve seen Big Gigantic play outside of the confines of a festival, and I must say, Friday night’s performance had me seriously impressed. When the two have time to kill, they can build a set that scratches all those itches just right. With support from Callie Reiff, Louis the Child and Hermitude (who played an excellent live set), the crowd was rowdy and ready to throw down. Saturday night saw support from house sweetheart, Mija. Mac Miller also made an appearance on-stage.
Big Gigantic got the party started with some jazzier selections from their newest release The Little Things (Featuring the amazingly sultry Angela McCluskey) before launching into a slew of crowd pleasing singles and covers ranging from their take on Macklemore’s “Can’t Hold Us” to Jay Z’s “Can I Get A” and that cash hungry anthem by Aloe Blacc, “I Need A Dollar” (which had the crowd throwing fake money like it was nobody’s biznazz). Their discography was well represented, with a focus on tracks from 2012’s Nocturnal and 2014’s The Night is Young, which still proves to be as addictively fun as it is high energy.
While music was king on Friday, the new stage design deserves some solid, “DAMN DANIEL’s.” Carefully placed in front of a creeping staircase of lights, Dom and Jeremy played in silhouette for the majority of the night. The backlighting added life to the geometrical backdrop as bursts of purple, green and blue cracked from behind the performers, as they jumped relentlessly from laptop to saxophone to drum kit. The fog machines helped filter the light in functional ways as rows of bulbs on each step flashed rhythmically to the beat of the music. The LED board, however, was a little unnecessary. For the most part, the visuals were repeats of the ones I saw at festivals like 2015’s Governors Ball and Electric Forest, and seemed excessive on top of the otherwise clever design.
Big Gigantic is one of those bands who never fails to have just as much fun on stage as those in the audience. This was one of the most successful sets I’d seen from the duo in terms of intensity building, and you can thank the new tracks for that. There were some pretty glaring sound issues toward the show’s peak which came to a head during the delightfully funky “Get On Up.” When their special guest played his trumpet, it sounded akin to a goose with a broken beak being turned into fois gras, while alive. The trumpet player was aware that the sound was off, made evident by the way he would pull the instrument near him to investigate between beats. However, that didn’t stop him from BLARING again and again. The sound guys probably deserve a smack on the hand for this as well, because the levels on his mic were turned to Roseanne Barr level AKA LOUD AF. It almost ruined one of my favorite tracks, and it definitely doesn’t help that the song is basically their “Stairway to Heaven,” coming close to seven minutes in length. Woooooof.
But if that was the only thing I can knock, then Big G is clearly still crushing the live game. For an act that has been criticized for recycling sets at festivals, I felt that this was a marked improvement and a dynamic showing that gave me plenty of reasons to believe these seasoned professionals have plenty of new tricks up their sleeves. Bottom-line, if they have the time (and this set exceeded 90 minutes) they’ll give you a show you won’t forget. And that’s why I’m still floating in the stars after Friday night’s epic NYC performance.