The Chemical Brothers

Published March 1, 2008 by Morgan Nichol | Comments (3)

Thursday evening saw me sauntering the 10 minutes from my office down to Vector Arena for a gig I’ve been looking forward to for a couple of months: The Chemical Brothers.

I’ve been down with the boys since…  Well it feels like forever, I remember wearing the hell out of a Chemical Brothers t-shirt around the office at ihug, after bringing it back from Sydney in about 1996.  So a pretty long time, all things considered.  With that in mind I was a bit surprised by how young a lot of the crowd was.  I wonder if these little 18 year olds consider this their generations music?  Given that I was rocking out to it when they were 5 or 6 years old, they’re not right.  But I’m happy to share.

Jason Holdaway spun vinyl as everyone arrived, then Minuit played for about 45 minutes or an hour – I’ve seen them 2 or 3 times before, and they’re good, but they need to smooth things out, they took a break after every song, if they drop even a very simple loop between songs, while the singer catches her breath, it would be a much more satisfying performance – considering that two of the three people on stage are just button-dancing, I don’t think this would be too tough to implement.  The singer is very interesting, with some unusual vocal affectations.  She’s also super hot – especially when wearing a tight little nurse outfit.

When the boys came out, everything really kicked into high gear, a very large mesh LED screen coming to life with visuals (which I’ve remixed and mashed up in my video – they weren’t anything nearly as busy, or dare I say confusing, in person) that were really wonderful – I only caught a few samples as I was dancing my arse off, front and center, but they were brilliant and if you weren’t there you’ll just have to make do with what I’ve brought for you.  Sound quality was great as well, which probably isn’t unexpected given my spot front & centre of the stage.  The bass deeply palpable, at times so powerful that it felt like a strong, cold, rhythmic breeze was washing over me – in a way I don’t think I’ve quite felt since The Brain in the town hall in about 1993 or 1994.

Great stuff. Please let me know what you think of the video.

  • Egon Ronay

    I saw them at an outdoor festival in Ireland last year. Looks like the same setup exactly (video, etc). Maybe because the venue was outdoors, the sound quality was awful. Only stayed for about 45 mins.

  • http://www.the-monkey.net Morgan

    Maybe it was, for all I know the sound quality was bad the other night – if you weren’t in such a primo spot.

    Outdoors is a pretty lame excuse if that was the problem though – I remember how hard Prodigy rocked out doors (really, really hard). Or Guns N Roses (possibly even harder).

    But come to think of it, I was pretty much at the front of those gigs as well. Were you far away from the stage maybe?

    That bass though, I’m sure the fidelity was better further back, just given the structure of the wave form, but people outside the certain death zone wouldn’t have felt the sound literally flowing around (and through) them. It’s a wonderful feeling. (And makes me really glad the brown note is a myth.)

  • http://www.the-monkey.net Morgan

    P.S. Damn I love how well this video turned out. (Given that it was recorded at 176×144 I think my work here was masterful!)

 
 
     
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