As TV viewers of their Glastonbury set will attest, concentrated Chemical Brothers kicks like an electronic mule. Which makes them ideal for Apple’s annual Roundhouse stint, an urban festival specialising in cramming huge shows into Camden’s esteemed barrel.
Cue a night of bone and brain-quaking rave intensity, the visuals as striking and artfully mixed as the music. Geometric lasers web the room as the crowd greet Hey Boy Hey Girl with what can only be described as a bulbous salutation. Pagan woodland gods with three-foot fingernails conduct bizarre chalice rituals along to the hallucinatory I’ll See You There. On Who Is This? a man caked head-to-foot in white powder barks furious funk gibberish into a phone, presumably chewing out Homepride’s packaging department. There are scary clowns, bursting paintballs and voodoo priests made of lights. It all feels like having Noel Fielding explode in your face.
They even manage to squeeze in the two enormous toy robots that descend from the rafters during Under the Influence but, this immersed in the Chemical stew, it’s the evocative mood-swings of the music that really enthral. The 70s cop theme dynamic of Block Rockin’ Beats has you mentally steering a pimpmobile through 70s Harlem while Setting Sun is dropped into a war zone, the incoming artillery barrage you can dance to. Cuts from their recent comeback No 1 album, Born in the Echoes, prove that, 20 years since debut album Exit Planet Dust, they’re still evolving crossover indie-rave without lazily ladling on dubstep whomps, embracing psych rock and building Formula One pile-ups of Doppler guitars. The continued live absence of Ed Simons, replaced onstage by visual collaborator Adam Smith, will only rile the DJ “performance” doubters arguing that you could stick a blond wig on a pen drive and have a Chemical Brothers gig in your downstairs toilet, but when they finish with the churchy, euphoric The Private Psychedelic Reel, they’re pushing live music’s most devotional buttons.
