Don’t Think is an attempt from Adam Smith to capture the unique collision of the audio and visual elements that combine to form a Chemical Brother’s Show.  It was filmed with over 20 cameras and is all done at one performance, the 2011 Fujirock festival in Japan. He mixes a documentary style, to capture the show and audience unawares, while also implementing a narrative element to give the film a dream like, or rather psychedelic, feel.  The film captures the ambiance and feel of the show offering a subjective look at it as seen from the eyes of the audience and as Smith says captures their “emotion”.

Adam Smith has been collaborating with the Chemical Brothers since their early days playing gigs in 1994.  Because of this the visuals have always been an extremely important if not inseparable part of their shows.  Indeed they work very much dependently.  Rather than the visuals merely aiding as an accompaniment to the music the two have a symbiotic relationship.  Many of the visuals standing alone are pieces of avant-garde art.  These include masks of light flying across the screens, scary profiles of clowns, people shaped cut outs dancing symmetrically and flashing sirens.  All these images build with the music rising to a crescendo on the drop that is met with the thousands of hands shown waving in unison completing the congruous triumvirate.

The shots of the crowd are as impressive as the screened visuals in many ways.  The many small cameras allow an intimate access to the audience.  The high definition and bright lighting allows a clear view of the audience’s reactions and we can follow their thoughts through a number of emotions ranging from joy to expectancy, fear, and through to complete ecstasy.

One of the crowd members that the film repeatedly cuts to serves a narrative role.  The camera follows her as she leaves the concert and roams the festival in a stumbled confusion of blurred backgrounds and flashing lights.  The visuals we have previously seen on screen jump off it and become part of her world.  The white cockroaches scuttle along the floor and the marching robot wanders in the outside world.  This is where the film goes beyond merely documenting the concert performance but attempts a psychological insight into the minds of those in attendance.

If surrealism is concerned with the logic of dreams then Don’t Think seems to offer up the logic of a psychedelic trip either by narcotic substances or perhaps the similar feeling that is created by the Chemical Brother’s intoxicating music accompanied with Adam Smith’s imagery.

What is so interesting about the reality that Smith and the Brothers have tried to create with this film is in the way that they have chosen to distribute it.  Considering the height of technology that the chemical brothers utilise in their production and shows and the futuristic visuals that Smith creates it is interesting that they have chosen to release it in such an old fashioned medium as the cinema.  Why not release it for internet stream or download via youtube or itunes or other such media outlets?  But this is why the film can be so effective.  Because it would surely be impossible to feel as if one were at a festival while enjoying the experience alone.  But in the confines of the cinema the experience is a group one, admittedly very different from the group interaction at a festival, but one is a part of a group none the less.  Furthermore, the film has been released “for one night only” to play at over 100 cinemas around the UK at 10pm on 3^rd February.  This not only increases the numbers that will be viewing the show simultaneously, bringing it up to a festival sized audience, but recreates the feeling of exclusivity experienced at a festival.  You were either there on the night or you were not.

It would be hard to argue that a festival can be recreated through sitting in the dark and watching a 2 dimensional screen.  However, Chemical Brothers fans can delight in the fact that the film is in fact the first to be made in 7.1 Dolby Surround Sound meaning that the quality should be as good as, if not better than, many live performances.  This means that you can experience their sound as loud and equalised as they were originally intended as opposed to quiet, distorted, and with too much treble, as many people now a days enjoy music from laptop speakers that play it off youtube.

Tonight, for one night only, don’t miss it.