Pitchfork

With indie rock DJs multiplying at epidemiological rates, it's probably time to collectively raise our bars. For a while, it was enough to simply encourage them, so stationary and joy-deficient had indie become in the dark days of the 90s. The first swarm of laptop cross-faders were rough around the edges technically, letting a little bit of beat-matching software know-how suffice for true mixing talent, but that was okay, given that it was such a novel sensation-- at least for those of us born in the late 70s/early 80s on the left side of the Atlantic.

But now that most major cities have an indie-dance night for every day of the week, we can afford to apply tighter standards. After all, mixing can be utilized for much more than the novelty segue or the arbitrary mash-up-- it can be used to assemble an emotional pastiche, make a complex genre statement, or manipulate the crowd's emotions as if they're plugged into the PA. Obviously, this has been common practice in clubs for decades at this point, but how well indie bands can be folded into the process remains to be conclusively proven.

Fortunately for Washington D.C.'s James F!@#$%^ Friedman, his mixing style doesn't wilt under harsher scrutiny, as the relentless Go Commando proves. Weaving P4k faves Annie, Out Hud, and the Knife into a dark, foreboding 70 minutes of music, the man with the cartoon swears proves indie can be legitimate turntable fodder in the right hands.

Using largely pre-remixed material, such as the Rapture/Hush Hush spelling-bee rework of Annie's "Me Plus One" or M.A.N.D.Y.'s do-over on the Knife's "Pass This On", Friedman conjures a cohesive mood that's pure American Autobahn, like a DFA that's slightly less disco-obsessed. Dark rhythms rule pretty much from wire to wire, which reverses the hierarchy of your usual indie-club set: rather than token electronic songs being used to dance up stiff guitar band material, Friedman's occasional injections of live instrumentation offer an occasional respite from the 4/4.

Whatever the case, the off-kilter voices of Tom Vek and Bloc Party's Kele Okereke are made to sound downright diva-like amidst the mix's machinery, whereas strange bedfellow landmarks like Out Hud and zombie soundtrack music integrate with little difficulty. Freeform Five's appropriately-titled "Eeeeaaooww" and the creepy 8-bit lope of Who Made Who's "Space for Rent" (Rapture/Hush Hush on makeover duty again) stand out among the sub-headliner names, moments where the new-wave yelping puzzle-pieces right into the cyberpunk machinery.

Friedman may be a ringer in this competition, having apprenticed in what his press kit refers to as the "D.C. rave scene" (hmmm), but his more polished technique should be seen as instructional to the Powerbook rookies of the indie-dance night world. Though Go Commando, in a Gestalt sense, ends up slightly monotone-- and while the tracklisting never quite gets as eclectic as Friedman's MySpace profile would promise-- it's still a salad bar of sounds that can hold the pace at most binge-drinking pre-parties. So put the open-digital-in nights at indie bars on notice, as the professionals may be starting to invade.