At Venue on Monday, March 25

Confetti. Lots and lots of confetti. It was hardly the only thing that dance fusion crew Major Lazer brought to the table at its sardine-packed Monday night performance at Venue, but the troupe’s jacked-up, sweat-inducing set guaranteed that a number of the skin-showing bods in the building would head home from the sold-out show flecked in the stuff.

Well before Mad Decent director Diplo and the rest of his crew commanded the crowd, though, party animals managed to show some love for local guy Sleepy Tom’s warm-up session—or, at the very least, one guy wearing a tricked-out ape mask and some glow sticks did, along with the handful of similarly neon-T’d girls he got down with on the floor.

Montreal beat-bringer Lunice’s set started off with an ominous drone and a choppy MacBook voice doling out the melody to Chopin’s Funeral March, which only seemed fitting once the producer-performer proceeded to kill it with a busy blend of trap beats and mashups. When not grinding away at his laptop or pounding on his sampler, he danced and animatedly mouthed the words to remixes of Juicy J’s “Bandz a Make Her Dance” and Chief Keef’s “I Don’t Like” as the paisley silk scarf tucked ’neath his cap bounced wildly off his shoulders. Aside from the outside hits, he also showcased tracks from his TNGHT project with Hudson Mohawke, with the pots-and-pans clank of “Bugg’n” bringing out the most cheers.

With Major Lazer’s long-delayed Free the Universe LP finally set to drop in a couple of weeks, buzz around the band is again at a fever pitch, so much so that the mere sight of DJ Jillionaire—who teamed up with Diplo following the departure of original partner Switch in 2011—walking on-stage and jumping onto an elevated platform full of computers and playthings set the crowd off immediately. Once Diplo, hypeman Walshy Fire, and a female dancer made their way on-stage, the outfit proceeded to blast the crowd with streamers, confetti, and a high-energy mix of originals and choice cuts from the worlds of reggae, moombahton, rap, Brazilian funk, and more—they even grunged it up with a nod to Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit”.

Walshy whipped the crowd into chants of “Lazer, Lazer” throughout the night, while the quick-wrigglin’ backup dancer confidently stomped, dipped, and twerked. Not content to rest behind the decks, Diplo soon cocooned himself in a clear, inflatable hamster ball likely on loan from the Flaming Lips to do some head-walking. Patched up with duct tape, the spherical casing looked like it had seen better days, but it got the job done as the grinning Diplo somersaulted his way to the middle of the audience. Walshy cracked that it was the first time his leader had managed not to get dropped to the ground, so good on you, Vancouver.

“Original Don” was one of many tracks that found Major Lazer bringing stilted synth sounds to a boil in a massive build before letting the beat explode. The dancehall groove of “Jah No Partial” likewise turned up the heat, with Diplo, now stripped of his dress shirt and tie and displaying an aggravatingly chiselled set of abs, bounded atop the table and demanded that the whole crowd throw their clothes in the air. “Shirts, pants, socks, whatever you got,” he said, whipping his shirt high above his head. The crowd followed suit, serving up some serious towel-power flashbacks.

Elsewhere, the band rifled through the R & B–and–reggae–tinged “Get Free”, pumping absentee Dirty Projectors singer Amber Coffman’s sanguine vocals through the speakers and letting the military snares and twisted vocal samples of early hit “Pon De Floor” run wild. A papier-mâché–helmeted version of the group’s cyborg mascot—Major Lazer, if you will—made a quick appearance mid-set but seemed pretty blasé about the night, offering a few mild fist pumps before peacing the scene.

Things got outrageous, however, once the outfit jumped into “Bubble Butt”, a banger that had Walshy bringing nearly a dozen female showgoers on-stage to bounce. Some jiggled in time, though two tiny ladies down to their pants and bras just ended up grinding each other against the speakers. When Diplo dropped into his fast-clapping solo joint “Express Yourself”, the girls flipped over into handstands, put their feet up high, and worked their glutes freakishly fast to the deep bass boom. While Diplo made it rain by flicking bills at the airborne butts, the crew expressed concern for the women by noting that only those who truly “know what the fuck they doin’” should attempt the potentially dangerous dance move, lest they want to crack their faces on the floor.

The last section of songs brought a reprise of “Get Free”, a calming stream of Bob Marley’s “One Love”, and a horn-heavy, first-wave-ska remix of their “Keep It Goin’ Louder”. The latter seemed especially pertinent: if you weren’t completely exhausted after the roughly hour-and-a-half of rapid-fire rhythms, the band was headed over to Celebrities for another scheduled DJ set to keep it goin’ louder just a little bit longer.