The Chemical Brothers @ Wireless, Hyde Park

 

So a good friend needed a party organising: it so happened that the Chems were playing at Wireless in Hyde Park. Job done.

If you’ve ever seen The Chemical Brothers before, you will know what their live show consists of: clean driving audio with live, tweaked mixes of their singles (of which there must, by now, be hundreds… I’ve lost count), and a huge video screen with bright, saturated, and sometimes creepy visuals, the set (and the night) finishing off with the throb of a decaying synth and the words “Love Is All” on glowing repeat to remind the audience of what’s really important in life. They played what is certainly my favourite track, Swoon:

So having seen this good, clean fun show a few times before over the years, we weren’t really there for them Chems. I think everyone was a bit excited by Alex Metric – he played a very fun set, narrowly skating cheese with his monster remix of the Beastie Boys classic Sabotage, but it worked so very well. The crowd went completely mental:

Speaking of mental, Aphex Twin also did what he does best. When the bass feels like a physical slap to every part of your body, you know the DJ is doing something right. Aphex definitely has a more “being made right now” sound than the Chemical Brothers, and the crowd feels that. Except to the substantial number of True Aphex Faithful, his tracks can be a bit obscure – and live they take on a totally new sound again. That said, classics like Windowlicker still get everyone shaking like they’ve just been electrocuted… so I’ll leave you with the mammoth 10 minute HD music video that everyone should watch all the way through, at least once. The Chems’ creepy clown doesn’t have anything on this.