Chemical Brothers Monstrously Groove to the Beat

The Chemical Brothers’ music never stands still. It’s almost as if the British duo has too many ideas and not enough time to explore them all individually, so everything just comes tumbling out in a relentless rush.

At the Hollywood Palladium on Friday, Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons demonstrated why they are electronic music’s most canny populists, imaginatively connecting the dots between countless subgenres of beat-driven music while maintaining a raucous party vibe.

The key to the crossover success of Rowlands and Simons thus far has been their boundless capacity to accommodate so many different strains of dance music--funk, hip-hop, house, etc.--into their techno template.

Although they remained ensconced behind an arsenal of gear on Friday, the team worked the Palladium crowd like master deejays. Establishing a monstrous groove from the outset, they dexterously stitched in old-school samples and hip-hop breakdowns, volcanic bass eruptions and deep house beats, as one song seamlessly slid into another.

The pair also relied on arena rock props to move the crowd. Colored spotlights crawled around the walls, stark rear projections provided visual stimulation and strobes flashed whenever the duo reached a break-beat peak. When it was all over, there wasn’t a dry shirt in the house.