LIVE Darkside Electrifies with Rave-y Final Show at Brooklyn's Masonic Temple

When Darkside announced seemingly out of nowhere that they were "coming to an end" with one final New York City show, fans responded with surprised disappointment. Though electronic producer Nicolas Jaar and multi-instrumentalist Dave Harrington had intrigued listeners with their stylishly muscular blend of beats and blues since they started collaborating in 2011, the experimental duo reached a wider audience with 2013's Psychic LP and last year's Random Access Memories Memories, a collection of Daft Punk RAM remixes.

darkside is coming to an end, for now. we'll be playing our last show in brooklyn on sept 12 http://t.co/IDNrgI80vj pic.twitter.com/OpdZszAR4E — DARKSIDE (@DarksideUSA) August 17, 2014

Leading up to their performance last night (Sept. 12), some tickets were selling on Craigslist for up to $1500. Though the "for now" in their tweeted announcement inspires some hope that the project may continue in some capacity, each musician has been doing their own thing alongside it for a while: Harrington released a solo EP earlier this year on Jaar's Other People label, and Jaar counts more R&B-minded collaborations with Steven Spielberg's daughter Sasha in addition to output under his own name (not to mention releasing an album as a customized mp3 player).

For their last show Darkside chose not Manhattan's 3,000-capacity Terminal 5, where they played a few sold-out shows this past February, but the much smaller Masonic Temple in Brooklyn. The line of club-ready attractive young people stretched around the block before filing into the church-like space, marveling at the woodwork and chandeliers, waiting for beers or soda at a slightly bootleg bar, and eyeing Darkside's minimal black-and-white T-shirts for sale.

Jaar once described Darkside as "experiential rather than musical," and indeed, the band live is a fluid, intoxicating thing. Though Jaar and Harrington stick to their songs' rough outlines, the two never stop riffing off each other, meandering down dark eddies for two or three minutes before resurfacing with a blast of blinding klieg lights and viscerally thumping low-end. Though electronic dance music signifiers were there -- hands raised in anticipation of the drop, the building temperature and humidity, and raptuourous expressions reflected in the occasional glow of the stage lights -- the show was much more than that, reflecting Jaar's commitment to pushing the boundaries of dance music.

Sometimes attending a Darkside show can feel like being inside a bellows, or inside the human body. On "Freak, Go Home," Jaar's hissing synth lines expand and contract between intermittent organ swells, dropping out entirely -- and then Harrington's wacking guitar line kicks in behind a steadily marching beat, all while Jaar's indiscernibly wailed vocals float overhead. It takes some time for the song (all their songs, really) to settle into a groove, but that just makes them all the more rewarding when they do; the 10-minute workout "Golden Arrow" starts with Harrington's distant distortion before crackling to a beat like a jump-started heart in slow motion.

Backlit by beams of light and wreathed in smoke, Harrington and Jaar teased with airs of languid suspense between intense bouts of heavy metallic shredding and "boots-and-pants" rhythms. Harrington's slashing leads on "Metatron" brought to mind electronic tumbleweeds, Jaar's clanging like spurs on a cowboy boot. But then, just as audience members could feel the barest wafts of the Masonic Temple's less-than-functional ventilation system, the two would heat up the tempo to a rattling bounce that got everyone rocking back and forth again.

"Thank you," Jaar said before the final song, launching into the equivalent of an Oscars acceptance speech as he thanked his fans, the lighting crew, Harrington, his management team, etc. It was the only bittersweet moment in a show that otherwise kept everyone too entertained to be pre-emptively nostalgic. He kept it mercifully short, aware that everyone just wanted to drink in the last sounds of a duo making music unlike anyone else.