These guys are from Sydney and they play Australian indie music,… really? Oh but it’s dance music isn’t it? Aussies are definitively full of surprises and full of exuberant-out-of-control joy apparently. Art vs Science has been touring the US and their show with another art-in-the-moniker-band Art Brut (just a coincidence) at the Satellite (or what should have been the Sunset Junction Fair), on Saturday night was one of their last ones.
With an overuse of synths, they played a series of loud riotous electronic dance floor numbers that set the place on disco fire. The legend says that the trio made of Dan Sweat, Dan Mac, and Jim Finn, formed while they were watching Daft Punk playing in Sydney some years ago, as vocalist/guitarist/keyboardist Dan Mac recalled in an interview: ‘I remember the light show and hearing the kick drum reverberating around the stadium, it was just such an epic, awe-inspiring experience… I felt 'well, I've got to do this!'’
And if it sounds too good to be true it may be, but these guys sure knew how to party, to bomb-rave-party, with epic and ultra repetitive songs including bouncy 80s funky synth riffs, electronic beats, elements of techno, hip-hop rhythms, and distorted vocals, the whole thing wrapped into a true dedication to dance music. With their skinny jeans and ties, they had energy to sell, pumped up from their frenetic hard-rocking-hip-hop-hiccup songs.
Most of the time it was flashy, goofy and plain ridiculous, like during the rendition of ‘Flippers’, announced as their ‘favorite song in the whole wide world’, calling the crowd to repeat the ‘Hey-Ho!’ and making everyone smile and jump, or like during their rendition of their first single ‘Parlez-vous français?’, driving the crowd nuts while everyone had to shout ‘Oui!’,… cheesy, but it undeniably worked beyond belief.
Head banging on their synths, moon-walking while playing guitar (they do use something else than the synth sometimes) they seemed to only exist for these moments, when they make crowds alive, like an electronic version of OK Go minus the confetti and the treadmills. I simply cannot imagine listening to their album ‘The Experiment’ at home, but I am going against the hordes of people who pre-order it!
If you like subtle lyrics, they are definitively not for you, and if their album has not received many good reviews, their cosmic-dance-funhouse is the perfect demonstration that a live show may bring a completely different experience than just music.