Eyedea & Abilities take Baton Rouge 'By the Throat'

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By Travis Leeper

DJ Abilities and Eyedea hail from Minneapolis, that secret music Mecca that sent the likes of Prince and Bob Dylan on a mission years and years ago. And like those two, these two are bringing something real around, offering one of the best and most stripped-down hip hop performances you could ever catch by ear.

Eyedea (Michael Larsen) and DJ Abilities (Gregory Keltgen) have been involved with the bumping Minneapolis music scene since high school, winning competitions such as HBO's Blaze Battle and the Disco Mix Club remix service. And though they've found some national success, Eyedea & Abilities aren't quick to forget the city that put them up there.

"We've been lucky enough to have grown up in the Twin Cities," said Larsen in an interview with Tiger Weekly. "There's a really amazing music scene here and we're lucky to have been involved with it from an early age. It's amazing; you can go anywhere with it. Anything from underground rap, independent rock, post-hardcore, or post-punk, it got off the ground in this city, and that's just talking about the popular styles of music. There's so much more."

Currently, Eyedea & Abilities have three albums behind them, 2001's Firstborn, 2003's E&A, and 2009's By the Throat. And though three may seem few for an eight year span, don't think for a second that the duo have been twiddling their thumbs.

"We're always working on new projects. I've done a few electric guitar demos, there's a band with some friends called Puppy Dogs and Ice Cream, an all-improvised free jazz and rap group called Face Candy, and a rock group named Carbon Carousel. I kept myself busy with all of that between E&A and By the Throat, so when it came time to do another Eyedea & Abilities record, there was all of that influence built up."

"[By the Throat] is a lot more melodic, I'd say," continued Larsen. "I think we dove deeper into our musical sensibilities, even into ourselves a bit, and made a record out of that place, instead of making some 'hip hop with guitars' record. We made some music that we considered really to be emotionally driven, really about what we both wanted to do."

There's little to nothing on the record that resonates with a typical hip hop album; the record eschews auto-tune, multi-tracked vocals, digitized pop hooks, and untold layers of studio samples for stripped-down raps and self-produced sound. By focusing on instrumentation and vocals rather than production pizzazz, Eyedea & Abilities make sure whatever you hear on the record you can hear live at the show.

"I think the best thing you can do as an artist is to be honest with yourself and try to find ways to show that honesty. Here in Minneapolis, there's like eighty hip hop shows a night. If you're up on stage bullshitting, people will walk out and go across the street. So we try to stay real to what we can do, and just work on that. That's all anyone can ask for."

Eyedea & Abilities are currently scheduled for an 8:00 PM November 21 show at the Spanish Moon in Baton Rouge. If you're looking for something as real as it gets, maybe this article will give you an idea where to find it.

Originally Published: Issue 824 - November 18, 2009

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