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SXSW 2011: Addison Groove teaches us how to Foot Crab

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It doesn’t make sense without the above video. As if the YouTube title couldn’t tell you, that’s Addison Groove‘s ‘Foot Crab.’ A Londoner’s chopped and sped version of Chicago juke music, a regional variant primarily popular in the Windy City and in London.

If you were in a FWD or Plastic People last year, you probably heard ‘Foot Crab’ regularly. I’m assuming the majority of people reading this don’t get either of those esoteric references, so let’s just say that if you like to dance and were at the right bass music spots in London, this was your jam.

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Friday night, the man known alternately known as Headhunter descended into the exposed brick bowels of Barcelona on East 6th Street -- the one spot truly conducive to dance music at SXSW (at least from my four years of experience). The bass is enough to make your marrow melt. In the bathroom, the walls convulse and you start to wonder if you’re in Austin Powers and they’re closing in on you. Everything hits like a heart attack.

Not to mention the candy rave/glow stick crowd are staples there and everything sort of blends into the sort of berserk dance party you’d expect at a German edition of Burning Man. During his set, Groove lived up to his name, keeping the proceedings ripe for the chemically altered stutter-step rhythms that moved as fast as the feet of juke dancers. Vocals were snipped and melded into intoxicating new combinations, and it made for an ideal late-night dance party that continued until Barcelona turned on the light and made everyone realize that they weren’t in Europe after all.

-- Jeff Weiss

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