Does It Offend You, Yeah? Probably

A boat on the Weser in October. Does It Offend You, Yeah?—the Reading-based band whose live sets felt like someone had locked a rock band and a techno DJ in the same room and told them to figure it out—shared the bill with Feadz, the French producer whose filtered, precise electro came out sharper than most of what was moving through clubs that year. Two different ideas about what electronic music should do to a body, both presented on a rocking deck in Bremen.

I saw Does It Offend You, Yeah? around this period and what stays with me is the volume and the commitment—they played like they were trying to break something, and the crowd moved accordingly. There was an aggression to it that the softer end of electro-indie never had. Feadz was the steadier hand: tighter, more controlled, the thing that kept it from collapsing into pure noise.

Boat parties always feel slightly provisional—the sound system balanced on something that moves, the crowd wedged against the railings, the whole thing one rogue wave away from being a different kind of night. That precariousness is part of the appeal. You end up somewhere strange and the music sounds different for it.