Leave the World Behind is a music documentary about super DJ group Swedish House Mafia, but it is not just for fans of progressive house music. Telling a story of unexpected success, six years of partying and deteriorating friendships the film is also a study of changing lives and priorities. A most rambunctious soundtrack – if house music is your thing, you won’t be able to sit still.
‘I should sit one row further back,’ the director Christian Larsson advised at the screening I saw, ‘if you want the full music experience’. I certainly got the full musical experience. This is a film to see with a great sound system – the chair was shaking as concert after concert kicked off and the energy flowed off the screen into the cinema. The girl sitting next to me couldn’t help doing a strange seated dance through most of the film.
We start with the 2012 announcement that the group is to split up. A clever marketing ploy as they then sell out the fifty concerts in the farewell tour in very short time.
But why were they ending it?
Started by three Swedish friends Axwell, Steve Angello and Sebastian Ingrosso in 2008, Swedish House Mafia was driven by the fans. The supergroup developed organically, playing together at a club, having a residency, doing a concert. Every time they thought ‘this might be the last one’ so we should party like it’s 1999. But it never was the last one. They were making the right music at the right time and their fan base grew exponentially. Eventually the three DJs were having police escorts from airports to hotels and were selling out the biggest stadia in the world. Their goodbye tour would see them perform at a packed Madison Square Gardens as well as – slightly less glamorously – playing to 60,000 people in Milton Keynes.
Although it is portrayed as a group decision Axwell seems to have got tired of the lack of commitment from the others. Swedish House Mafia was always a side-project for all three of them, albeit a side project that took off and reached levels none of them had anticipated. They realised that it needed more commitment than they wanted to give.
‘We partied for six years, five days a week,’ said Seb, explaining why they felt they couldn’t go on. Don’t think that they were having two days a week off to recover – those were to travel to the next party. When they gave up drugs and drink the fun seemed to go. Now the men all have families and live in different places. The film shows the slipping of the friendships and though it doesn’t end in great arguments or violence there is the realisation that they just aren’t best friends anymore. Without that bond they have no desire to carry on.
The film is fast paced and quickly edited. The concert sequences show the huge scale of their performances. Black and white archive material shows something of the relationships and the tensions that build when priorities change. Otherwise it shows the repetitive nature of life on the road. After all these aren’t rockstars but three men from the suburbs of Sweden, as Seb explains to a tearful fan. Ultimately they want to spend more time with their families and have more control over their projects.
They were all successful DJs before Swedish House Mafia and SHM has only enhanced their reputations.
Oh, and according to the director the best row in the cinema to watch the film was row three.
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