(Photo by Brooklyn Vegan)

As Saturday night’s Buraka Som Sistema show progressed into a crowd-surfing, stage diving, water gun shooting dance party, a 20 year old hipster in a white t-shirt yells to his friend, “this is no fucking Modest Mouse show. Fuck Death Cab For Cutie.” The comparisons were faulty, but the general message of the statement was true. This was not your average Saturday night at Bowery Ballroom, and Buraka Som Sistema is not your average band. The Portuguese DJs’ brand of Brazilian flavored Kuduro club music was made to be a crowd pleasing orgy of a live show. And shit was crazy.

The music of their debut album, Black Diamond, is influenced heavily by Angolan Kuduro, a type of dance music which has been popular in Lisbon for a couple of decades. DJs Lil’ John, Riot, and Conductor combine these sounds with world hip hop and dance flavors to make something so psychotic, so divergent, that it is a wonder they were able to contain it within the walls of a 550 capacity club.

Featuring Blaya’s dancing, two MC’s, two laptops, a live drummer, and extra sets of ridiculous drum pads, every second of Buraka’s set was filled with incessant amounts of entertainment. They played almost everything from the album (including my 2008 songoftheyear, the M.I.A., DJ Znobia track, “Sound of Kuduro”) and also mixed in a ton of house and hip hop favorites, putting a Buraka spin on Lil Wayne’s “A Milli,” among others. At different points, they invited about 30 girls up on stage to dance, unloaded a super-soaker on to the crowd, gave the address of their after parry, shot off confetti, sirens. Mayhem.

Everyone loved every second of it and danced their asses off – most badly, and most not caring. Every member of BSS exploded on stage, giving and recieving an apex of energy from the second the “Black Diamond” logo was projected above the stage. Of course, they ended the show on what has quickly become their signature “Crouching Crowd Finale,” insisting that everyone at the show get down on the floor and then jump up at the same time. Yeah, even you, photographer, get down! This is no fucking Modest Mouse show.