First look: The Chemical Brothers' 'Don't Think'

Last night we were lucky enough to attend a preview of The Chemical Brothers' mind-blowing new full-length concert film Don’t Think. Directed by long-term visual collaborator Adam Smith, it’s the first time the full Chemical Brothers live experience has been captured on film and, as you’d expect, it’s a front-seat psychedelic assault on all your senses at once.

Don’t Think documents The Chemical Brothers’ headline set at Japan’s iconic Fuji Rock Festival in 2011. Set to a hallucinogenic backdrop of exploding paintballs, psychotic clowns and galloping horses, the film immerses the audience in an onslaught of sound, film and light, catapulting the viewer onto centre stage for brief, intimate glimpses of Ed Simons and Tom Rowlands, before dipping them into the heart of a frenzied 50,000-strong crowd.

“The aim was to create a different type of concert film for a different type of show,” explains Smith. “By using small unobtrusive cameras, we were given privileged insights into the private moments of joy, fear and ecstatic escapism from reality that this show induces.”

Smith, who directed Emmy-winning period drama Little Dorritt, has worked with The Chemical Brothers since the band’s first gigs in 1994. He produced Don’t Think in collaboration with Marcus Lyall and Lee Groombridge for Ridley Scott’s production company RSA Films in association with ML Studio.

The film previews on 26th January and will screen in over 100 UK cinemas on 3rd February.