I’ve been a fan of SMD for quite a while. Back before electro and indie dance merged to become fidget they had a part in creating some nice, rolling anthems, the most famous of which is probably Simian vs. Justice’s ubiquitous “We Are Your Friends” a song that was tragically inescapable and whose popularity became something of an in-joke for my DC rave friends.

What really made my group of friends take notice was the mix they did back in 2006 for NME when NME was trying to push their whole new rave movement. The music was really fun and exciting and largely new to us as DC dance culture wasn’t really…adventurous. It was a small market that was getting smaller for an audience that didn’t really seem to appreciate risk. An evening of dance was a warm comforting blanket and social event rather than a chance to try things out. Repetitive beats and repetitive events.

Thankfully, PA is just two hours away and New York, four, so those of us who wanted something a bit more, could go out and get it. So, we did when Simian Mobile Disco came to PA in early 2007. It was all electro / indie dance / protofidget anthems but we didn’t care, because it was loud and it was fun and it was what we loved at that moment and no one else was doing it in DC.

I have a lot of love for SMD and was really excited to see them again. It had been a while since they were even on my radar, so I was really curious as to what they’d be playing, of all the genres, I didn’t expect it to be pretty much just straight banging techno.

The weather was once again an oppressive humid summer heat sapping your strength and soaking your shirt minutes after leaving the house. We gear up, head out and arrive in time to catch the first act of the day, The Netherlands.

You can see from yesterday’s review that I liked them. Timo Ellis, the singer/ guitarist used a Health like bank of effects pedals to put his wonderful chunky psyche doom while Hannah Moorhead’s bass and keyboard filled the walls with equal presence as Japa Keenon O’s drumming was able to plug into a variety of styles. Do yourself the favor and check them out. The Pool Parties didn’t sound like the best venue for them, as they indicated they tend to use more psych lighting and their style of dress and sound was far better suited to a club rather than mid-afternoon in the sun. It doesn’t matter because the music was awesome regardless.

Didn’t know anything about Dark Meat, but a quick peek at their MySpace page showed active members as 19 and the quick snippets that I listened to put me in the “this sounds like it’s going to be some hippy jam band bullshit,” one of the few genres which I cannot get into despite repeated attempts. Seeing them set up in face and body paint with full horn section, two different organs and multiple percussionists put the fear of god into me.

What actually came from the speakers was wild discordant noise that sounded half- structured and half-improvised but fast and wild as a bad idea and just as infectious. The songs were about “a fucked up bloody white guy I saw last night” “how our entire band is on drugs” and I couldn’t quite get the measure of them before they had spun out of control. There was a gentle moment when Sutra Streamers were they carried to the crowd enveloping people up in bright colorful paper, some voluntarily, others not and this was shattered when the song’s power slowly escalated back to full banging mania like having a conversation about politics on the internet, civil and laid back until at the end everything was smashed and destroyed and then… exhausted, the band carried themselves off stage.

I’m not super familiar with The Fiery Furnaces, but what I’d heard wasn’t unenjoyable. Clever lyrics and music that seemed a bit twee for my tastes. Friends told me that when they perform it could be unpredictable with what you’ll actually get. What we got was a four piece sans keyboard and pretty straightforward arrangements and a set list with songs predominately all from the new album or at least unfamiliar to the people I was with.

Simian Mobile Disco opened up with a reworking of an Animal Collective song and from there spent the next hour and a half that we stayed with wall to wall banging techno. It was great, but it was really exhausting to listen to as there was really nothing much more beyond huge synthlines and expanded kicks and bass. I loved it but I couldn’t take too much of it without wishing for something a bit more to break it up a bit, but the audience loved it and members from Dark Meat came on stage with a trombone and trumpet and played into the microphone so we had a mix of analog and digital entertainment. The set up was three pioneer CDJs and two mixers, so there was no Ableton tomfoolery there, which is a shame because I think it would work well with all of their various musical interests.

I think I was in the minority for this because everyone that came out had an absolute blast and danced despite the horrid heat. I left happy with what I’d heard and eager to hear where they go in the future.

Ominous rain clouds insured an atypically small mix of the devoted and reckless at the Williamsburg Waterfront yesterday. Despite the threat of rain, the weather held while The Netherlands, Dark Meat, Fiery Furnaces and Simian Mobile Disco performed.

I missed out on The Netherlands, so Dark Meat was the first band I got to see. Dark Meat has an unwieldy lineup, I think I counted fourteen people on stage. The band is a rowdy mob of hippies, some shirtless and some with their faces painted. Their playing style is disorganized and cacophonous, as if four musicians started a band then added ten arbitrarily chosen people and randomly assigned them instruments. “This song's about how I went out last night and saw a real bloody, fucked up white dude walking down the street,” explained lead singer and guitarist Jim McHugh before the band launched into one tune. If McHugh had written the song the night before, I wouldn’t be surprised. Much of the band’s music lacks structure or definable melody as if the songs were composed spontaneously by the untrained. At one point, the band's tuba player got off stage and wandered into the park still playing, and by into the park, I don’t mean into the crowd, but rather into the area by the porta-johns and beer stands. The band may be adept at creating a spectacle, but they are not adept at making music.

The Fiery Furnaces are an indie rock band based in Brooklyn. Sporting a four piece line up, the band nonchalantly began a garage blues set under the clouds of a storm that never materialized. Vocalist Eleanor Friedberger has a charming, half sung, half rhythmically chanted delivery that she used to great effect on songs like “The End is Near” as the band played behind her. Eleanor’s brother, Matthew Friedberger contributed jazzy guitar tones which worked well with the whimsical lyrics. The band’s stage presence, however, is far from polished; Eleanor Friedberger's mostly sedentary approach to performance didn’t bring the audience to a crazed state of ecstatic joy. Fiery Furnaces' inability to rile up the crowd is excusable, though, because a lot of the audience was there to see the headliners who have a completely conflicting musical style. In fact, unless seeing the Netherlands would have revealed the common thread linking these bands, yesterday's bill seem to consist of entirely unrelated acts.

Unlike their openers, Simian Mobile Disco’s DJ set had the crowd packed tightly to the stage as the English duo took their places. The spacey psychedelia of Animal Collective’s “My Girls” blasted through the venue's speakers, as the duo remixed the song into a dancier incarnation while the jubilant audience bounced. Later several musicians from Dark Meat (including their trombone player) joined the fracas with the DJ’s fading the beats in and out to give the analog musicians ample opportunity to be heard. After their guests departed, SMD continued pumping out their set; some songs contained short addictive, catchy vocal samples and others were purely instrumental.

JellyNYC definitely knows how to throw a party, I'm learning. Yesterday, Williamsburg gathered at the waterfront to see a lively DJ set from on-the-rise legends Simian Mobile Disco, but not before an eclectic lineup set to take stage before them.

As I walked into the concert area, I wasn't quite sure what I was hearing. Someone on stage was screaming, though that's not quite new or different from what I'm used to seeing -- it was the whole production that seemed odd, with random noise coming from random instruments and dissonant harmonies that almost worked but at the same time didn't. Turns out: what I was seeing and hearing was Dark Meat, a self-described psychedelic band playing heavy free-form psychedelic rock, a collective from Athens, GA. They began when many of the members worked together in a restaurant and wanted to start a Neil Young cover band. That obviously very quickly changed. They grew from a small band to a huge ensemble with a lot of different instruments (sax, keyboards, drum kits, trumpets, clarinets), and 23 people are credited on one of their earlier albums -- we saw at least 10 people on stage yesterday, if not more. Dark Meat also tends to include theatrical elements into their stage show, which we saw in spades: face paint, crepe paper processionals, you name it. Whether or not it was my type of music, they were certainly rocking out on stage and definitely had fun with it. "This next song is called 'Everyone In Our Band Is On Drugs,'" they yelled at one point, and, yeah, I could see that. But it definitely made for an interesting show.

Next up was Fiery Furnaces, an indie rock band formed in Brooklyn. They're fronted by brother and sister team Matthew and Eleanor Friedberger. They play indie rock pop, with heavy undertones of punk and dub music -- and their show is lackluster but not a mess. They're a talented group of people, though sometimes their songwriting feels a bit clunky, with too many different rhythms and metre changes in one song, leaving the audience not exactly knowing how to move to it. They had a lot of fans in the audience from what I could see, though, with many people singing along to every word of every song.

Last up was the main event of the night, Simian Mobile Disco, who played a lively 2.5-hour long set for a highly energised crowd. They took the stage with very little fanfare -- just walked on right after Fiery Furnaces' set and said, "Grab a beer, step forward, and get ready to dance," and that's exactly what everyone did for the rest of the night. SMD kept the crowd moving the entire time with their infectious beats and playful manner. A production duo from London, SMD formed in 2005 and have since been gaining fame, earning them a huge underground reputation as some of the best in the business. Though their early singles weren't huge hits, it got their name out there, and created the group that I saw yesterday. James Ford and Jas Shaw were comfortable on stage, and it showed -- they knew what they were doing when they cut out the bass, built up anticipation, and dropped right back in. Ford kept throwing playful looks at the audience as Shaw kept his head bent, smiling over the equipment. Standing on a wall looking over the crowd, it was easy to tell that the audience was loving it, jumping and dancing their hearts out to every beat.