"Welcome to this random tunnel in London," Mike D begins, addressing a crowd of melting people in a Waterloo railway arch, the latest stop in his first solo tour, which he has chosen to undertake in esoteric venues around the UK - think bingo halls and working men's clubs. Why do this? It relates to his esoteric approach to music, as one of the Beastie Boys who turned eccentricity, risk, and japes into some of the greatest hip-hop ever. You also sense that, given this is his first musical foray beyond producing other people's records since the death of Adam Yauch in 2012 - with him being open about his struggles after the death of his friend - he is building back up from the basics. He is trying out his new music and his new band in a humble manner, rather than just playing Beasties' Best Of at The O2. Except, that's not quite right either.
For this is Mike D, resplendent in a day-glo jogging suit, backed by a band called The D5 who are also in day-glo jogging suits. From the second they start, it is a bouncing, joyous show. The music we hear is not some tentative dip back but immense and immediate, melding punk, hip-hop, and rave with a very Beasties gonzo attitude. Yes, this seems to be about Mike D rediscovering what he loved about music in the first place: the fun of it. And the fun of being part of a band. His sons, Skyler and Davis, are part of D5, and they form a proper unit - this is very much not Mike D with a backing band; instead, it is like watching Devo doing a HIIT workout, all flying arms, hair, toy ray guns, and a stripper's flair when it comes to shedding clothes in a venue D drily calls, "A bit clammy."
It is a sweatbox in this tunnel. But the music sounds incredible, instantly addictive. One of the songs he has already put out, What We Got, features a brutal guitar line with a chant-along old-school chorus that shapeshifts into nu-rave; imagine Klaxons, but good. Make It Stop follows, outrageous fun, sampling Kraftwerk but not in a precious Coldplay way - rather, in a robot-dancing way. Next, they move into the first of two Beasties tunes, Looking Down the Barrel from Paul's Boutique, with that heavy industrial rolling guitar riff. Later, they close the set with So What'cha Want, an all-time attitude-filled hip-hop shred classic from Check Your Head. These two old tunes give a good idea of where his music is at sonically: loud, intense, an onslaught of sounds and ideas that still manages to be catchy as hell.
Beastie Boys were, of course, a hardcore band first. The new songs take this sound and expand it. True Colors sounds like Spacemen 3. I Don't Care has a more mellow touch before going all sci-fi. Secrets flies fully into the stratosphere, with Mike D declaring a "safe space on this spaceship." It begins with a heavy pulsing dub before expanding into epic ambient disco. His new single Switch Up begins as a jungle track before diving into avant electro-pop, sounding a bit like Fcukers playing Pissed Jeans. The encore features a blistering version of Delta 5's Mind Your Own Business before So What'cha Want brings out the inevitable graveyard of smartphones - way to kill the moment, morons - but the last song of the main set is a song called Thank You. It is worth dwelling on because it produced a genuinely moving moment: a slow song with Mike D singing, "We were just kids... trying it out... thank you for everything, thank you for having me." As realisation dawns that this is his heartfelt ode to MCA and Ad-Rock and gratitude for their incredible journey, the crowd in the tunnel responds so warmly and genuinely that D seems to shed a tear.
And this is just it: with his kids in the band, and his past honoured in the spirit with which he is approaching the present, this is curiously emotional as well as being a joy. As he put it at one point, "This is a song from my old band... not that it's over. I'm in it for life."
