Relentless Waves of Sound, Reined by Drops of Thundering Bass

Late in its two-plus-hour set at Madison Square Garden on Friday night Swedish House Mafia was playing its second Coldplay remix in a row, “Every Teardrop Is a Waterfall” following “Fix You,” and most of the people in the sold-out arena were bopping, as they’d been all night. The seat next to me had been occupied by at least four different people, all of whom had danced in and then danced onward.

At this point, though, the elegantly-sinewed tank-top-wearing gentleman shaking up a storm next to me tapped me on the shoulder and showed me a message he’d typed on his cellphone: “Y no movement?”

In fairness, taking a break of any sort felt heretical in this crowd full of glow-stick necklace and wristband wearers exulting at every drop of bass offered by Swedish House Mafia, a troika of Swedish
D.J.-producers — Steve Angello, Axwell and Sebastian Ingrosso — that was the first D.J. act to headline the room.

For this show they were dressed in what might be called Miami Formal — black T-shirts, tight black pants, a black summer-weight sweater. They weren’t working much harder than their wardrobes indicated. Technical complexity isn’t a big part of the Swedish House Mafia assault (unlike, say, that of A-Trak, who played just before them).

Instead, the group specializes in size. As a unit, its members do very little that they don’t already do as individuals. Each has had a decade-long career making music across the spectrum of house music, though in this project they lean toward straightforward, four-on-the-floor mega-house, with little in the way of rhythmic variation. A few times during this show, when the drums would arrive on the off beat, it was notable, even exciting.

Last year Swedish House Mafia released the impressive “Until One” (Astralwerks), its first album, a collection of original productions and remixes. And at this largely relentless show, it showed off how it manages to make different combinations from the same inputs of thundering bass, terror synths, the occasional screech and so on. Adding to the blunt-force set-up were snippets of familiar pop hits, welded into the group’s pounding attack. Besides Coldplay, there were Diddy-Dirty Money’s “Coming Home,” R.E.M.’s “Losing My Religion,” Adele’s “Set Fire to the Rain” and more, each put in service of Swedish House Mafia, not the other way around. The same went for the slightly more artful and careful house songs by the group’s peers — Calvin Harris’s “Feel So Close,” say, or Cassius’s “I Love You So” — which the group remolded and rendered gargantuan.

“New York, we’ve come a long way,” one member said. “We put a nightclub in Madison Square Garden.”

What was missing from this strafing was any sense of overarching narrative, of an ocean to contain these large waves. Instead, it was one thumper giving way to the next. (In concept it wasn’t all that different from the industrial-strength dubstep promulgated by Skrillex and his ilk.)

Twice Swedish House Mafia was joined by living, breathing vocalists, to nil effect: Tinie Tempah on “Miami 2 Ibiza” and John Martin on “Save the World.” Unlike the soulful vocal house of days gone by, this iteration of house music uses vocals as casual decoration, a weak counterpoint to its heavy rhythmic punch.

But often the punch was enough, as on the so-huge-it’s-reassuring “Save the World,” the group’s most recent hit, and the first single from its coming second album. That song came just before the end of the set, but the group closed instead with a version of Robin S’s “Show Me Love,” the 1993 track that was formally remixed by Mr. Angello and Laidback Luke two years ago. It felt like a wink to classic house, the sort that most of Swedish House Mafia’s music all but obliterates, making you ask: Y no movement?