Show review: Supreme Cuts, Memoryhouse, Balam Acab, 10/11

By Reagan Healey

Supreme Cuts

Chicago duo Supreme Cuts refuse to be labeled “post-dubstep,” preferring instead the more whimsical “future R&B,” even musing on their Twitter that post-dubstep should sound “like Godspeed but with wobble bass” (ha ha ha). But despite their professed distaste for the Skrillex cult, there is a pretty striking similarity between most sample-based music and pretty much all dubstep: as a general rule, the most inebriated guy in the room is usually the only one who knows how to dance to it. That said, Supreme Cuts are an absolute trip, a local treasure. They’re like a fucked-up Yin-and-Yang that smells of menthol cigarettes and blunt smoke--that last part isn’t a metaphor, by the way, Slack Kevorkian damn near knocked me over on his way for a cigarette after Friday night's show at the Empty Bottle, and he really did smell like weed and more weed.

Slack Kevorkian (also known as Magical Options) and his bandmate Mike Perry seem onstage like the kind of opposites you find in an '80s cop-comedy. Mike Perry looks like a slightly younger, more wholesome version of Alan Palomo of Neon Indian. Slack Kevorkian looks like someone who would overcharge you for hydrocodone. Clad in a Gucci Mane hoodie, his long, stringy black hair pulled out of his eyes with a dirty Bulls cap, he seemed part early Jack Donoghue, part Jay from a Kevin Smith film. If he didn’t have the habit of constantly gushing over his favorite artists (which range from Waka Flocka Flame to James Ferraro), he really would have run the risk of coming off too sketchy for his own good.

Supreme Cuts are in between records at the moment: their debut EP Trouble is currently available through Small Plates Records, and their first LP Whispers in the Dark is slated to come out sometime in the spring. Given the duo’s unapologetic admiration of smooth R&B acts like R. Kelly and Keith Sweat, it doesn’t take long to guess where they might have found the latter title. If leaked single “Belly” is any indication, though, it’s an apt name. The duo’s absolute wealth of samples, although distorted and layered out of recognition, seems culled from obscure early-'90s soul compilations designed specifically for sex. Every good sample-based act needs an angle--that is, an essential feeling to the bits of sound they dig up and manipulate. Supreme Cuts' sound is uniquely their own: sleaze layered on with a heavy, sweaty hand.