Casual Projects, D'Opus &Roshambo @ Transit Bar,Canberra (24/12/08)

Sun 28th Dec, 2008 in Gig Reviews

CHECK OUT THE CHRISTMAS EVE FESTIVITIES HERE!

Typically Christmas Eve is a night reserved for celebrating and embracing the Christmas spirit and to go to bed early before Father Christmas comes down the chimney with your presents. Last Wednesday night at Transit Bar events and festivities ran in another manner whereby everyone embraced and celebrated unique home-grown hip hop and R&B and stayed up late in order to say goodbye to a much-loved Canberra hip-hop outfit.

To kickoff the festivities known as Seasonal Beats was local DJ Alistair who kept punters at ease with his own unique creation of industrial and experimental beats and rhythms over the course of the 7 and 8 o’clock hours while most people were finishing off dinner and washing back a lager or two.

Following this was D’Opus, one half of D’Opus & Roshambo with his compilation of mixes of techno and rap which easily gets a party started. One may wonder why he did a DJ set before he was about to perform with Roshambo but I suppose he wanted to warm up his DJ gear. He is easily one of the best DJs in Canberra as he is a genius in his scratching and mixing.

Not long after D’Opus had warmed up his DJ deck, his partner in crime Roshambo was ready to bring the house down with renown local hip hop and R&B. They mainly stuck to their songs off their recent CD The Switch including People of the Globe, Leave the Girl Alone and Triple J favourite Million Dollar Bill. Roshambo asked the crowd to vote for the radio hit on Australia Day for the Triple J Hottest 100. Releasing the success that Million Dollar Bill has achieved, D’Opus unleashed a new remix of the song. Somehow he had hooked his iphone up to the DJ deck and was able to DJ from his phone by pressing buttons. Genius!

It’s surprising that they haven’t made it bigger than they have. Maybe they should be moving to Melbourne with Casual Projects.
After a lengthy set up period Cas P were ready to unleash their greatness to the ever-endearing crowd at Transit. As soon as they began their set with their hands up in the air united as one, they had the crowd in the palm of their hand for the rest of the evening.
There was a mixed crowd as some people had come to the show willy nilly to witness the hype of Cas P and others new exactly what they were in for and were dancing and singing along to every song. Either way no-one was complaining!

Even if you weren’t the biggest hip hop fan it was impossible not to give into the temptation to dance the night away to Cas P’s own blend of Hip Hop, R&B, Rock and Pop. Almost every element of genre of music was there, so there was much satisfaction to be had. As such it is easy to see that Cas P has been working long and hard to achieve the right blend of genres to put into their songs. This is probably why they have eight members in their band and probably need all eight to pull it off.

They decided to split their set into two draw out all their greatness in the one night, so after about 20-25 mins they had a rest in between sets. If one looked closely you would spot a camera set up on the tables near the stage. It turns out that they were filming their set, so we may see this performance one day in the comfort of our own homes. After about 20 minutes Cas P emerged on the stage again to bring down the house one more time for 2008.

Canberran’s don’t fear, we will see Casual Projects again in the future and they have assured us that they will never forget us and their hearts will remain with their hometown.

For those of us who wanted to go home early for Christmas we could, but for those who weren’t quite ready DJ Alistair and Elecktro Mechanical Vs Skuff T kept the party going until 2am.

Merry Christmas!