By Daniel Rutledge
:: The Chemical Brothers
:: Vector Arena, Auckland
:: March 2, 2011
The Chemical Brothers latest live show, the Further tour, has to be experienced to be believed.
It’s a truly amazing visual display, surely one of the best in the world, set to some of the greatest dance music ever made.
Last night’s show included a fantastic mix of tunes from throughout the Brothers nearly 20 year career and despite playing a mid-week show, they got a huge response from the often ecstatic crowd.
I arrived shortly after support DJ Zane Lowe, a Kiwi ex-pat who has made it big as a DJ in the UK, had started his set. He was playing some very nice drum n bass.
He talked over the mic during much of his set which was occasionally annoying but generally good, getting the crowd hyped well. Later his set took a turn for the worse as he pumped out some awful old dance-pop numbers like Darude’s ‘Sandstorm’, but generally he played a decent, mainstream-leaning mix which also included some dubstep and hip-hop.
Dedicating the last track, Scribe’s ‘Not Many’, to Christchurch, he ended by cutting off the track and slightly editing a line to: “It’s all good when we rebuild this hood!”
Nice one Zane.
After a short break, the Brothers came on to a very long, deep, slow-building intro. When they got to their equipment, they kicked off with ‘Galvanize’, and when the main beat dropped, Vector Arena went nuts. And it sounded brilliant.
I should point out here that the Arena cops its fair share of complaints over acoustics and sound quality. This is much more the case with rock acts – I remember walking out of Them Crooked Vultures mid-set it sounded so crap – but both times I’ve seen the Chemical Brothers play there it’s sounded amazing.
Later in their show, bass was pushed out at some insanely low frequencies and loud volumes. Standing in amongst the crowd it was a real joy to feel such power. Bass dominated a lot of the tracks, of course, but the mix where I was standing sounded spot on.
After ‘Galvanize’ other early highlights included ‘Horse Power’, ‘Chemical Beats’ and ‘Swoon’, which is the best Chem Bros single released in years.
Now I really need to re-emphasize just how amazing the visual display was. But it’s difficult to do so as you really needed to be there to appreciate the scale and impressiveness of it. Check this video for an idea, it's of them playing ‘Leave Home’ and ‘Block Rockin’ Beats’ in Paris at the start of this Further tour.
It's is a combination of perfectly designed videos to accompany each song displayed on an enormous screen, along with a simply incredible lighting and laser set-up.
If you went to the U2 or Gorillaz concerts last year and were impressed with how they looked, this easily left them both for dead.
Friend and colleague David Farrier has never really been a fan of The Chemical Brothers or dance music in general. I really wanted him to come along to the show, however, as I knew he’d really dig it, at least on a visual level.
He’s a huge fan of Nine Inch Nails and part of that is due to their incredible live shows, which remind me of Chemical Brothers shows in terms of pushing the latest video and lighting technology as far as it can go.
Farrier did indeed love the gig.
“It's the best light show I've ever seen, and I've been to plenty of shows,” he told me afterwards.
“The images alone projected onto the giant screen behind the brothers was enough - but add to this the circular lighting rig suspended above them, powerful lasers, and an array of intense lights - and it was mind-blowing.
“Seeing the music video for ‘Horse Power’ projected on a giant screen at the back of vector with the volume up to 10 was almost spiritual. Spiritual with added whinnies.”
The middle of the set was the best bit, the best bits being a mash-up of ‘Setting Sun’ with ‘Out of Control’, ‘Hey Boy, Hey Girl’, ‘Don’t Think’ which is used in Black Swan, ‘Saturate’ and ‘Star Guitar’.
Before the encore, they ended with the ‘Leave Home’, ‘Block Rockin’ Beats’ bit linked to above, which was yet another highlight.
There seems to be not much of a live element to what they do these days – setlists show hardly any variation from night to night, if any at all. During the longer intros and outros they often cut loose with a bit of freestyle noise, which is awesome, but even most of the transitions sound pre-programmed.
But that doesn’t matter too much. There is a huge amount of planning and set-up that goes into their live show and it pays off. Plenty of other gigs provide actual live music, this one is truly spectacular as it is.
I guess if I was really nitpicking I’d say that there was too much 4/4 beat driven stuff and not enough f**k-off big beats that they championed in their early days, popularizing the genre along with Fatboy Slim and to a lesser extent Prodigy.
But then pretty much every concert any fan ever goes to will be filled with “more old stuff!” cries.
These blokes have a large back catalogue now – seven studio albums and a shitload more singles, b-sides and remixes – and the 17 or so main pieces they chose to play tonight were brilliant.
The encore consisted of ‘Surface to Air’, ‘Hoops’ a little tease of ‘Dissolve’, my favourite track off Further, and then ‘The Private Psychedelic Reel’ as the final track. Now that tune is surely one of the finest pieces of electronic music ever produced and it was a brilliant way to cap a great night.
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