Dimitry!!!’s High Voltage party on Wednesday nights at the Annex are always an amazing time. Always packed with good looking kids, dancing, socializing, making plans for future collaborations. It’s a great place for people to share new ideas and sounds. It’s also a great place to just let loose.

That’s why it made it a perfect place for performances by New York’s Hearts Revolution and Philly’s InnerPartySystem. Two very edgy bands, displaying reinvented forms of dance music to a group of people who would be incredibly accepting.

Full review and visual greatness after the jump!

This was Hearts Revolution’s first show, but regardless, they were really great together live. It was sort of one of those things where I was like, part of me doesn’t love this, but the other part of me LOVES it. I couldnt take my eyes and ears off them, and really think that they’re headed in a direction that could be pretty awesome. It was something like Atari Teenage Riot fronted by a gorgeous chanting girl that was almost Mark E. Smith in delivery, but early 2000’s electroclash in style. With a little more fine-tuning, they could have a club hit, and with Black Terry from Young Love on the drums, they definitely know a bit about club hits. By the way, Dan Keyes was there to lend his support of his drummer’s side project.

(Hearts Revolution)

Innerpartysystem took down the house. The boys of IPS aren’t schmoozers or networkers or social folk for that matter. They dont kiss people’s ass in hopes that they’ll show up to shows or book them shows. They just get up there and perform and people freak the fuck out. Their light show is like a 5th member of the band, but not intended to cover up any missing elements of their live show, but rather to add to it like a guitar part might.

Minutes into their first song, the audience was singing along with the singer, Patrick, “We’re all here cos we’ve lost control,” which was chanted over and over again. The audience with their hands in the air as if lifted up into a rave, some of them not paying attention to the stage, and not having to with the members all blacked out by the back light.

At one point, some very intoxicated girl got lifted up onto the front of the stage where she sat, waving her arms in the air and doing her best drunk girl dance. Towards the end of the set, she finally hopped off and started grinding with some dude, who was almost ignoring her as he took photos of the band and the audience. At least 5 people came up to me while they were playing to find out who they were… all sweaty and out of breath. Those people may have not known what they were expecting when they came to the club last night, but they left with a new favorite band.

The girl…

The crowd against the lights:

Dan Keyes from Young Love and Patrick from InnerPartySystem:

Tags: annex, hearts revolution, High Voltage!, innerpartysystem, nyc, philadelphia

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 6th, 2008 at 12:47 pm and is filed under High Voltage!, Live Shows, Party, The Annex. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.