Cut Copy with the Presets, 9/15/08 at the Record Bar

Cut Copy with the Presets

Next Best Thing To: The Faint opening for New Order

By JASON HARPER

Photos by MICHAEL FORESTER

The Record Bar throbbed like an artery last night as Australian electro-pop groups the Presets and Cut Copy turned the small bistro-slash-concert-hall into a sweaty slip ‘n slide of rave-house dance beats and live-PA fury. Even the Rock-Afire Explosion might have lost some animatronic bear fur trying to keep up.

I arrived around 9, just in time to catch the Presets’ kickoff. I couldn’t believe they were starting so early, so I asked KKFI DJ Sunshine (host of the Retro Red-Eye Express), bopping nearby, who they were. She removed a glow-in-the-dark necklace from her mouth and told me they were indeed the Presets. Two guys stood on stage, one at a drumset, one on a vocal mic behind an array of cabinets loaded with synths, both of them lit from behind by rows of flashing neon bulbs as tall as a person, 20 of them total. Based on scant YouTube reseach, I expected the group to be gothy and overdramatic. And even though they had that hard-edged, squelchy-techno sound reminiscent of the Faint, they presented their music more like a saltine bromide to be licked up by hungry dancefloor sheep than a greeting card to the eyeliner set.

More after the jump.