I got my first car when I was 15. The first track I played in said car was “Galvanize” by The Chemical Brothers. They always knew how to pump me up. When running miles and miles a day, I would jam to Push the Button or their Greatest Hits album and I knew what songs would pump me up to literally go an extra mile. “The Test” is the single most motivating song I’ve ever heard. I play it as a rally song before doing anything worth doing 110%. Despite my love of their music, the brothers are virtually unknown to me. I have never pulled up their Wiki page or tried to see them live or heard more about their process. I don’t follow them on Twitter and don’t care too much when their next album is do out until iTunes notifies me that they have a new album. That’s how I am with most artists.
The 2011 Grammys had two nominees in the electronic album category that I was rooting for. One was BT’s These Hopeful Machines and the other was The Chemical Brothers’ Further. Further reminds me very much of BT’s This Binary Universe in many ways. They did something absolutely remarkable with this album. It’s an audible dreamscape accompanied by videos that go with each song along with a making of. Further is an album I’ve used to write much of my blog over the past few months (including this post).
Guetta’s set finished at 10:10 and I was confused why The Brothers needed 20 minutes to setup and then I saw a few dozen synthesizers, multiple mixers, a few computers and more equipment than the majority of production studios would ever dream of having. I’ve heard speculation about their Live shows not being truly “live” but this was live. The duo ran back and forth the stage turning knobs and queuing up beats while an extravagant visual show flooded our retinas with cosmic chaos that was only matched by the flood of bass and vocals that hit our ear drums and bounced around uncontrollably.
It was the greatest electronic show I’ve ever witnessed in my entire life.
The set list ranged from singles they released in ’91 to music that just recently arrived on their latest album that came out in June of 2010. The Brothers used some of those visuals I mentioned that accompanied their latest album as material for this show but they were all a little different as in silhouettes of people were a different color and the videos were cut a bit differently.
Of note, if you are afraid of the following, don’t attend a Chemical Brothers show.
- Happy Clowns
- Evil / Angry Clowns
- Roaches
- Spiders
- Strobe Lights that go repeatedly for 60 seconds until you just have to close your eyes
- Evil toy robots
- Exploding Paint
- Exploding Tea Kettles
- Elephants and Lions repeatedly coming at you (assuming you were wearing 3D glasses)
I have a lot of friends who are afraid of bugs and clowns so I’m sure some people in the audience were terrified. An angry clown two stories tall yelling “get yourself high” on repeat must have frightened a few people.
The show was as beautiful as it was frightening. Each visual timed perfectly, each sound into the next. This non-stop 1.5 hour joy ride through 2 decades of Chemical Brothers music blew everyone away.
What is so interesting is that, after David Guetta finished, no one seemed to know who the Chemical Brothers were except for a select few. It was still a packed house but a lot of people left. The guys with no shirts and head bands left, the girls with thongs left, the kids with camera phones left and the high people left. They all left after Guetta finished. Those that were left were mostly wearing all black, with their hats pulled down tight and comfortable shoes. They didn’t have cameras or bags or any rif raf. They were there to party. They were the club kids who you ONLY saw at Ultra if you were that 7-9 years ago. They were the hardcore believers of techno and those that followed the craft in their daily lives. They were there to enjoy some freaking Chemical Brothers.
I felt home for the first time all weekend. Aside from the BT show, I felt like an outside at nearly every set all weekend. During this show, there was no one around but “us” and we were about to get down and experience the Brothers and what they had for us.
From Star Guitar to Hey boy, hey girl to Galvanize and Horsepower and song to the siren and block rockin’ beats and get yourself high escape velocity and on and on and on, we all danced as one while lasers traced over our faces.
I’ve never danced so hard in my life and those few stragglers that didn’t get Chemical Brothers left after the 1st song. The club kids united and danced their butts off. For two straight songs, I actually lost control of everything and just gave into the music. It was the happiest moment of my entire year. I can’t find the words to really capture it (maybe you can tell I’m trying).
The set ended with cheers and screams for an encore. Everyone stopped looking at the stage and started looking at each other and everyone (all 10,000+ of us remaining) started hugging and high fiving and smiling and a few, still kept their hands in the air toward the stage as if they just reached enlightenment.
It was an enchanting evening.
I’ve never experienced anything like it in my life. This was the show at UMF and the one that, if you missed, you either don’t get it or you really really missed out and are now kicking yourself.
Nearly 20 hours after the show ended and you can still search Twitter for Chemical Brothers and see people talking about last night’s show. It was that good.
Ps – I don’t have any photos from this show because I was too busy dancing. Sorry.