Man Mantis and Asumaya at the Memorial Union Terrace
Man Mantis, taking care of it all by himself
Both Luke Bassuener and Mitch Pond have plenty of experience being onstage with their respective groups. But Wednesday night, Bassuener—performing as Asumaya—was without his Control bandmates, and Pond, for the first time, was standing alone as Man Mantis, the producer behind this year’s brilliant instrumental hip-hop album, Cities Without Houses. The two dudes handling a full night of entertainment squeezed all of their gear onto the Terrace’s cozy stage at the same time, but the compact setups didn’t limit the amount of heavenly racket they conjured.
Admirably taking the opening spot since Mantis couldn’t see the lighted buttons on his gear while the sun was still up, Asumaya wasted little time with chatter as he knocked loop after loop out of the musical curio surrounding him. As he opened with “Marketing Is My Culture,” it was unapparent whether the blown-out hiss that clouded the sound was on him or folks behind the boards, but nonetheless, the effect seemed appropriate and worked well with the polyrhythmic post-rock. As Mantis paced nervously around the stage before his set, Asumaya kept unbelievably cool while punching up beats from something resembling half of a coconut, playing bass and drums while singing over looped tambourine with vocals and handclaps, and maintaining focus while draped in instruments during “Be A Drop.”
After Asumaya’s well-received set—and just as an attention-seeking, rodeo clown performance artist was really starting to get annoying—Mantis took the stage to a rousing introduction from friend and collaborator Dudu Stinks. Thinking back on Mantis’ mother’s comments about how a DJ show can look like “a guy doing dishes for two hours,” it was hard not to compare Mantis’ live show to that image. But whatever showmanship was lacking, he made up for with an intriguing transition between “Come Into My Parlor” and “Boom Cloud” and early on lyrical assistance from Dudu, DLO, and Deken Frost (of Star Persons) on “Red Dragonfly” off this year’s Sea Ambulance EP.
Despite a few minor hiccups, once Mantis began slowly letting Cities standout “Teacups Of Our Ashes” build to a fury before breaking out a guitar and a brand-new mask for the triumphant new “Week-end Radioletters,” it seemed he was already getting the hang of this live stuff. Closing things out with a monstrous remix of the Beatles tune “A Day In The Life” certainly hurt his chances of winning over the crowd, but by that point it was clear that just the Man and his beats were enough to thoroughly rock the show.
