Adolescent fun and fantasy
The Chainsmokers’ runaway train tore through Bangkok last Friday night and left 23,000 EDM fans hot, sweating and baying for more. Hot-right-now duo Drew Taggart and Alex Pall were clearly revelling in their biggest Asian crowd as they dropped the number a couple of times during the show and later emblazoned it across a photo on their Instagram. Well they should, as ticket sales would have neared the 60 million baht mark.
But there’s no room for such cynicism if, like my teenage daughter Pai, The Chainsmokers are the first concert you have ever attended.
Behind closed doors Pai sings and dances like a crazy girl, but in public that’s a big no-no. So I have to give begrudging thanks to the US deejays.
When Impact’s Challenger Hall boomed with the opening beats of their hit Inside Out, and the crowd roared, hands in air, so too did Pai. It was wonderful to see her jump and dance and sing with the masses, not caring about anyone or anything.
I was witnessing a rite of passage, as she experienced Pink Floyd’s “warm thrill of confusion, that space cadet glow”.
The hipster eye-candy (Drew is the best looking, according to Pai) kept up a relentless pace with hits like Closer, Roses and Paris. Each tune began with their catchy, slightly melancholic electronic melodies, before the breakbeats kicked in with a wild and edgy dub bassline that rumbled satisfyingly in the chest cavity and serious Skrillex-style techno that verged on aural insanity.
The crowd loved it, cameras in air (something they were urged to do, that along with bounce, dance, jump and go crazy). They knew every song.
There were even a few short mixes for old-grown rave babies like me. The boys dropped a bit of SnoopDre action with Next Episode, and the mighty Dominator — I’m bigger and bolder and rougher and tougher — with its outrageous, glorious futuresound techno-Hoover (if you have to ask, you’ll never know).
And herein lies my biggest issue with pretty much all the EDM acts I’ve heard. All of the mixes are so rushed. It really is proof positive of the shorter attention spans we hear of, the fallout from the internet, born of smartphones.
I am pretty sure none of the kids at the gig will ever experience a quality old-school vinyl DJ mixing two already-extended remixes of the same song, taking you on a 20-minute journey that crescendos as both channels are thrown full-open and the huge ecstatic power of the hook takes you rushing through space in Dimension Z.
Instead, modern EDM is an on-to-the-next-one assault that in no way allows you to get your groove on and do that funky sex-type thang. But what do I know. The kids loved The Chainsmokers, and that’s all that matters.
One thing that got my full approval was the visuals. A mixture of cartoon, illustration, film and CGI, and projected in HD, they looked great and had a fantastic treatment in sync with the music.
The DJs played just behind a stage-wide riser, maybe 3m high, and behind them was a huge screen, with the visuals projected onto both. Seen from the front, it looked like they were floating in air, or walking on nothing through the middle of the images when they jumped on the riser. A deeply cool effect.
It’s hard to say if The Chainsmokers kept the best for last, as judging by the crowd’s reaction (and certainly Pai’s) the show was all killer and no filler. But at the end of a melodic and at times hard and hectic Don’t Let Me Down, Drew was on the riser, mic in hand, shouting: “Sawadee krub, Bangkok. Kob khun krub.” The crowd erupted and the lights came on.
Pai turned to me and said: “I don’t want them to go! I want them to play again!”
I replied, fatherly and knowing: “Don’t worry princess. You’ve got a lot more concerts to look forward to.”
Unfortunately, it seems I do too.