Photo by Brian DeRan.

Towards the end of the night, it started to feel like a last man standing match between Gang Gang Dance and the audience. After a late start (the band didn’t hit the stage until after 11) and pummeling the crowd with its blend of fusion dance, few were left on their feet as the room emptied just before midnight.

Pulling from their most two recent albums Eye Contact and Saint Dymphna, the New York quintet stretched their already lengthy songs past the point of accessibility, but it never felt unnecessary. Singer Lizzi Bougatsos, working as the master of ceremonies, led the band through their more recent catalogue with ease. When she wasn’t singing, she and her “vibes manager” Taka Imamura (who spent most of the night waving a homemade flag and dancing on stage) snaked through the crowd as the band effortlessly worked their way through heady jam sessions.

But this wasn’t a concert filled with teases to favorites and extended jaunts of new or unreleased material, like the shows Animal Collective have been known for. Songs like “House Jam”, “MindKilla” and “Glass Jar” rang out from the ether as revved up versions of their studio counterparts. Like most of the songs on the set, the familiar showed up then evolved into something else. There was no real beginning or end to each song, just times when the band started and stopped playing music. It never really felt like a proper set, just musicians stepping on to stage and riffing off one another’s energy and talent. It could have been disastrous, but for Gang Gang Dance it worked as a creative and coherent blast of sound.