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Disclosure brings EDM to the Fillmore

One of the elements of electronic music's past missing in EDM is grandeur, theatricality. What's missing is the cinematics that made Brian Eno's instrumental-only works inventively and dramatically ambient, that made Afrika Bambaataa eerily epic, that made Kraftwerk and DAF as daring as they were danceable. Where once there was subtle shading there is now squelch, ping, and boing. That's great in its own right. Often though, it's disposable and forgettable. Quick - hum a Deadmau5 song.

One of the elements of electronic music's past missing in EDM is grandeur, theatricality. What's missing is the cinematics that made Brian Eno's instrumental-only works inventively and dramatically ambient, that made Afrika Bambaataa eerily epic, that made Kraftwerk and DAF as daring as they were danceable. Where once there was subtle shading there is now squelch, ping, and boing. That's great in its own right. Often though, it's disposable and forgettable. Quick - hum a Deadmau5 song.

Britain's brotherly duo Disclosure - Guy and Howard Lawrence - have been hell-bent on changing that lack of grand savoir faire with a finessed melodic aesthetic that's as risky as it is risqué and warmly theatrical. (There's a reason they're part of the new Bond theme along with singer Sam Smith, who made his star on Disclosure's "Latch.")

Disclosure makes deep house music with a big, homey feel. Along with two briskly atmospheric and grooving albums - 2013's Settle, 2015's Caracal - to its credit, Disclosure packed Fishtown's Fillmore on Monday and Tuesday to show its surround-sound fury.

Set up on two U-shape podiums, the brothers Lawrence hit the house music flutter-and-wow of "White Noise" and "F for You" with sleek synth layers swerving, live bass lines pumping, and wave-generated squiggles jumping behind them (it's a very Kraftwerk visual). The slap-back percussive kick below "Superego" and "When a Fire Starts to Burn" merely bolstered the rhythmic punch that their blobby, bubbling sequencers made palpable.

Howard took the mic to sing emotively on the speedy mix of "Jaded" with a handsomely funky and flat Bernard Sumner-like voice. "What are you afraid of?" he hooted, as bottle-clinking pulses and gently windswept synths swelled below. The oxygenated sampled voices of Lorde and the Weeknd (on "Magnets" and "Nocturnal") added fine, breathy layers to each of their respective tracks. Lorde's femme whisper and Weeknd's hypnotic coo lent breadth to the classic vocal-house feel of the former and the rolling, throbbing harmonies of the latter. One of the best - and simplest - pleasures of the night came from "Willing and Able," featuring the heavy, cold Green Velvet-like voice of Kwabs set before a phase-shifting organ, a percolating groove, and little more. That and still, it was nice to see and hear a voice as human as Howard's capturing real-time soul in a bottle.

Disclosure was the first EDM show the Fillmore held, and the high, wide room and its souped-up sound system acquitted themselves nicely.