Touring the UK together for only the second time in ten years, DJ Format & Abdominal treated a rapturous crowd to material from a collaborative career that spans two decades. Showcasing their new album Still Hungry, their first full-length release together, they played a live show that harked back to the golden age of hip-hop – or perhaps showed it’s not over yet.

They were straight into the swing of things with ‘Behind the Scenes’, the first single from the album, a wry and relatable breakdown of the more mundane aspects of a professional musician’s life. Its comfortably funky rhythm and tongue-in-cheek humour, coupled with the pair’s easy chemistry on stage, told the story of the gig to come: it was breezy and effortless, tunes you can’t help but love on first listen, performed by an experienced pair who joked and laughed with a loyal crowd.

On the decks, DJ Format took us through dusty and obscure rock ‘n’ roll samples with the likes of ‘Behind the Scenes’, ‘Still Hungry’ and ‘Reflective Meditation Rhymes’, all laid back head-boppers, through to heavier crowd-movers like ‘Dirt’ and ‘Diamond Hammer’. A well respected DJ and producer in his own right, at times his excellent scratching took centre-stage, and late in the gig he even took a solo – which is not something you get to see every day.

For his part, Abdominal was able to flow between the light-hearted and theatrical ‘The Hit Song’ and more political tunes like ‘White Rapper’, but always with a confident smile on his lips. Prepared to think outside the box, he preferred to perform a remix rather than revisit an old great for the thousandth time, and took a novel approach to rap covers, inviting Format to spin his own beats while he rapped other people’s words on top – the result was a mashup that visited the Beastie Boys and Jurassic 5, to name just two. Later, his performance of ‘Breathe Later’, where he showed off how many words he can rap in one breath, was an impressive exhibition.

Begged back on-stage for an encore, they visited two tracks, both older classics, before calling it a night: ‘Ugly Brothers’, a hilarious narrative where Abdominal’s storytelling skill came back to the fore; and ‘Participation Prerequisite’, which had every single person in the crowd rapping along – although most of the crowd sang along for the entire gig in any case.

DJ Format & Abdominal are a duo who have a lot of history and chemistry together, not to mention a real creative flair. Performing an incredibly strong new album, they also have a wealth of older favourites to draw on, and the flexibility and imagination to make their show something you can’t see anywhere else. It’s a recipe for success, and the proof was in Abdominal’s rapport with his crowd: “you guys in the front”, he said, pointing to a group in band t-shirts. “I recognise you – you’ve been coming to our gigs for nearly 20 years.” It’s not hard to see why.
Ben Noble

Website: mcabdominal.com
Facebook: facebook.com/DJFormatUK