Something happened during the initial theatrical screenings of the Chemical Brothers' concert documentary Don't Think that, while spontaneous, also felt like a foregone conclusion: audiences got up and danced. Sharing a darkened room with a flashy, quick-cutting, psychedelic sensory overload blasted out in Dolby Surround can do that to people. Especially when it's based around a set from arguably the most enduringly successful rave-gone-pop act of all time. Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons have built a 20-year canon that can effortlessly fill 90 minutes with wave after wave of euphoric, body-shaking classics. And at a time when their occasionally-bumpy transition from next-big-thing 1990s icons to Hanna-scoring cool older brothers has positioned them as elder statesmen of a resurgent moment for electronic dance music, the role of a generation-bridging legacy act has fit them well. So while Gondry and Jonze did them plenty of justice in the MTV era, an actual audiovisual document of their mind-bending live show feels a bit overdue.
If you're wondering how Don't Think overcomes the skepticism people might still harbor towards live EDM shows, it's actually a bit misleading to focus on the music itself as a performative act. It's more of a catalyst for something bigger, an approximation of the kind of mixed-media freakout that provokes synesthesia. Not that Tom and Ed aren't up there working the dials and controlling the levels and amping up the crowd-- every time they're shown on film, they're twiddling switches to some end or another, messing with levels and dropping in cues and, crucially, being just as propelled by the music as the people in the crowd. (One key shot -- a single finger hitting a key on a synthesizer that lets loose with that sharp opening hornet-buzz of "Hey Boy Hey Girl"-- almost feels like a jolt on the order of a Pete Townshend windmill.) The Chems have earned a rep for avoiding canned setlists and predictable sequencing, and even if some moments lean on long-used ideas-- Bernard Sumner's voice on "Out of Control" is chopped up and folded in on itself in much the same way as it was on the live Glastonbury 2000 version that appeared on the Music: Response EP-- there's no contempt in their familiarity.
Expecting the gold standard that Daft Punk's Alive 2007 set for re-defining career-spanning overviews shouldn't be necessary; there aren't as many transformative mash-up tricks or back-and-forth intra-song dialogues on that level. But there's still no shortage of the kinds of fan-geekout juxtapositions that give new meaning to tracks new and old. The bombastic Boss 302-gone-Roland 303 of "Horse Power" sounds a bit more at home cut out of the more subtly refined surroundings of Further and dropped in the midst of an early peak, but it also makes for a perfect stage-setter for the vintage acid of "Chemical Beats". And the b-boy lineage of a set-closing run that conflates "Leave Home", Q-Tip's vocals from "Galvanize" and the deathless "Block Rockin' Beats" is a fine way to go out, especially when that latter track's familiar bass gets pushed into super-fast-forward until it's just a blurred, stammering climax.
And the newer stuff stands just as well on its own. The crowd goes nuts at the woozy, vertiginous opening of "Swoon" for a good reason, and the title cut's hyperventilating bridge between Surrender favorites "Hey Boy Hey Girl" and "Out of Control"-- think Dig Your Own Hole deep cut "It Doesn't Matter," but simultaneously more melodic and more suspenseful-- is perfectly placed to make it sound like the they-still-got-it highlight it is. It all flows so smoothly so immediately that tracks which felt like late-career missteps on album-- like overstuffed pigeon-toed funk oddities like "Do It Again" and "Get Yourself High", which show up in succession in the set's first 10 minutes-- come across as all-hook monsters, fused in a way that splits the difference and shaves off all the fat.
It's a good CD, but a staggering film. Shot at the 2011 Fuji Rock Festival by longtime visual partner Adam Smith, it's a rhythmically edited spectacle that builds off the strobing pulse of basslines and lights alike. But even under the engaging light-show antics and all the allusions to 60s acidsploitation LSD-freakout sequences (faces covered in swirling colors, dancing silhouettes, scary clowns), the real engrossing thing is the focus on the crowd as the performative focal point. And not just the massive faceless festival-size throng, either, though there isn't a lack of wide shots and pans showing just how many people are going berserk at pivotal moments.
The field of vision is often geared to make a theatergoer feel like they're on the same scale as the people on the screen, a microcosm of thousands-strong energy strewn across a dozen faces. And there's an emphasis on capturing individual people as certain moments break-- abrupt drops startling an unsuspecting fan out of his reverie, buildups sending people into head-back ecstasy, people losing it as they shout along to lyrics. Sometimes it pulls back to the outer edges of the crowd by the concession stands, occasionally following one woman in particular and capturing moments where she's frightened or amused or disorientated by all the things going on around her; other moments we see vendors nodding along to the music or bewildered concertgoers suddenly finding out that the same projections that flood the main stage's screen also sneak in little cameos amongst the trees and the mud.
It's an angle that might seem derived from performative social-media awareness; when everyone has a video camera, crowds are so easily distilled into individuals. But its real effect is an on-the-field, you-are-there immediacy that pulls you in more than any concert documentary recorded in recent memory, capturing not just what you see when you're riveted to the stage, but what you see when you turn to your friend, when you glance over your shoulder, when you wander the grounds, when you completely lose control. The crowd at Naeba Ski Resort could say they were there, sure, but you could probably count anyone who saw it in a London theater or a Montreal living room or a Chicago train ride as claiming an honest attendance, too.
