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Whether or not you’ve totally bought into the dance music revolution (or even like the music) is almost beside the point. For a band whose music is built almost entirely around the premise of making people feel good, there are whole oceans of melancholy and self-loathing buried just underneath the surface.īut the music: wow. “We should have focused,” Axwell says, sadly. Shortly after boarding a private plane to be flown to some far-off locale, Axwell says that there is a “worry of becoming one hit wonders.” Elsewhere, Ingrosso says that they “aren’t friends anymore,” while Axwell openly wonders whether or not any of the guys fully committed to the project, since they never even lived in the same place while trying to work on music together (and were constantly consumed with side projects and the ongoing drama of their personal lives). Throughout the documentary, you hear the different guys say things that give you this impression. Something went horribly wrong at some point. There is some deep-seeded resentment amongst the band members that is palpable in every frame of footage. Unlike the similar, SXSW-screened LCD Soundystem documentary “ Shut Up and Play the Hits,” their break-up doesn’t feel like something that was based on some kind of intellectual whim. They got heavily involved with drugs and partying and wanted to rein that in, instead focusing on their families and about putting out the best music they could. (Instead, the albums more closely resemble a long-form mix tape, where other artists rest alongside their original compositions and selected remixes.) But their popularity, along with the popularity of electronic dance music, exploded. One of the band members describes the tour as they would describe the music, as an “assault on all senses.” As a band, they were still relatively new: they formed sometime in 2008 and have never released an entire album of original material. They recount how the band was formed, somewhat haphazardly, based around their shared love of the Daft Punk album Homework and a curiosity about how far they could take that particular musical aesthetic. And Ingrasso is a man who seems to be composed exclusively of nervous energy, and unlike the other two is relatively clean-cut. The movie introduces the band members: Axwell is handsome and has a long shock of hair and acts as the band’s de facto ringleader, while Angello is dark, tattooed and bearded, giving off a broody energy even if he’s not actually brooding.

The movie begins with a series of title cards about the band’s dissolution and the staggering trivia behind the tour (like the fact that they sold out Madison Square Garden in nine minutes) and then toggles backwards. The documentary, sharply directed and edited by Christian Larson and executive-produced by music video pioneer Jonas Akerlund, is pretty formal in its execution and doesn’t deviate too much from the standard music documentary format.