Saul Williams is a different type of performer, and a complicated act to understand. His show, along with his music, can be frenetic, chaotic and magnetic – but it can also be subtle, insightful and quietly beautiful. His mixture of singing and rapping, which is set to very heavy production, and bare poetry, often conducted in relative silence, fluctuated between provoking and near-overwhelming. At all times though, whatever the pace, Williams was uncannily capable of filling The Haunt’s stage with his personality alone.

He gave a sensationally physical performance, where he leapt around the stage, climbing onto the PA. For a single vocalist joined on stage only by one man on the decks, and some visuals on the back wall, his ability to dictate the mood of the audience was impressive. At times he stoked the energy, transforming the room into a frantic mess. Some of the heaviest moments really tested the limits of the audience and their eardrums, moving his set towards an alien kind of prog-rock or metal-rap fusion.

However it was a show of peaks and troughs, with plenty of variety. He measured the pace, building the energy or dropping the tone where necessary to pull the audience along with him. Although the sheer energy of his rapping was magnetic, his lyricism and poetics were probably the high point: when he wasn’t making them dance, he could enrapture the crowd and cause the room to fall completely silent. There was something almost eerie about it, in fact.

The high point was probably the moment when he jumped into the audience, actually turning his mic off. The whole crowd hushed, and strained to hear him preach – for preaching he definitely was. He’s set his character up as a moralist and a guide, and his lyrics are didactic, critical and highly intelligent. There were bags of social commentary and burning insight – although how much of the Saul Williams we saw was performative character, and how much was honest, is another question. Certainly, much of his material was self-aware, and even tongue in cheek.

Given his recent releases, which are abstract and probably not to be taken too literally, it seems he’s smart enough to be careful about committing to his lyrical content. He is obviously aware that when he tells his crowd to “de-construct everything”, inevitably that includes him and his music. Much of his social commentary was deep and progressive, and very persuasive, however as he becomes more successful, he becomes paradoxically more and more a part of the establishment he rails against. To his credit, he himself addressed this in one of his songs, which saved his message from being sanctimonious and self-contradictory. In fact, by winking to himself like this, he seemed to be taking himself a lot less seriously than some of the crowd were.

Whether conducted sincerely or not, his lyrical skill is in no doubt. It’s probably fair to say that he is, first and foremost, a poet – and a talented one, at that. His character too is striking, and his approach to live performance is fundamentally different to most you’ll see – all of which make a Saul Williams concert an unusual and rewarding experience, not to be missed if he comes to Brighton again.
Ben Noble