Die Antwoord Are The New Standard For Internet Age Bands (Help Us All)

Could there be a show in 2010 more indicative of where this crazy ol' music business is going than an Internet viral construct playing to a sold-out theatre in Montreal without an official in-store release to their name?

Well, I suppose Die Antwoord's 5 EP (released by big boys Universal) would qualify as something tactile, but prior to South Africa's most unlikely hip-hop exports Ninja and Yo-Landi Vi$$er — who eschew Internet convention by looking identical to their online selves — taking the stage, what exactly differentiated them from the other memes out there? Forget Inception's dream within a dream; this show blurred the line between real and fakery to an extent where you really had no choice but to stand there, take it and learn to love it.

First up, Brooklyn, N.Y. buzz band Sleigh Bells may have produced one of 2010's more exciting debuts, but were an absolute mess live. Treats has pretty much everything you want from a noisy 2010 release: it's loud, cheap, disposable, cheery and mostly a lot of guilt-free fun. On stage were two wooden bodies seemingly playing music, but a good chunk of the proceedings were very clearly pre-recorded. Singer Alexis Krauss' vocals were live with some occasional overdubs, but her mostly shouted, off-key bleating was incredibly grating, and her wobbly Stevie Nicks sashaying in an orange brassiere didn't exactly qualify as stage presence.

Look, no one was expecting the duo to recreate an orchestra, but previous instances where I've seen the same format worked to greater effect include being blinded by 30 minutes of Crystal Castles hiding behind a strobe light, and energetic Ting Tings vocalist Katie White navigating a floor covered in effects pedals.

Hell, if you've ever seen Montreal's own Homosexual Cops play beats from an iPod while yelling out weekend aphorisms, it's evident even the most modest of set-ups can be fun. It is possible to still be an engaging live act while keeping a low onstage head count, but chances are something's wrong with the stage show when your guitarist leaves for single-song breaks mid-set and nobody notices.

The Funkadelic sampling "Rill Rill," Treats' best song, was the main offender, with guitarist Derek E. Miller awol and Krauss unable to sing the chorus without resorting to shouting. The set ended with some hope, as the duo finally started shaking their upright bodies at the conclusion of "Crown On The Ground." Still, it was one of the worst live sets of 2010.

So it meant the joke band was tasked with saving the night, and astonishingly the Zef-rappers were even more impressive and musically inclined than their YouTube videos might suggest. Most importantly, Ninja and Yo-Landi can rap astonishingly well and quickly, which in the grand scheme of things makes a lot of sense.

From the immaculately produced videos, the quickie record deal, the hilarious press release sent to members of the media and the carefully placed stories in certain online publications at just the right time, it's obvious there's major marketing muscle behind these Alexandra Township natives, and it's certainly clear the shadowy powers that be didn't bank their next Internet-to-cash phenomenon on poseurs who didn't have the chops.

Die Antwoord wisely opened with "Enter The Ninja," and Yo-Landi, followed by Ninja a minute later, stepped on stage wearing oversized white hoodies covered in black artwork (Ninja's prominently featured Casper The Friendly Ghost holding his enlarged phallus), while their shirtless, masked DJ violently swung his arms in the background.

"In South Africa, we say what's pumping," Ninja said early on. That was one of the few comprehensible statements that emerged from the thickly-accented MC.

"Pumping" was a frequent theme of the night, as Ninja ended most of his verses with a pelvic thrust that would emphasize the semi-hard erection putting a slight dent in his Pink Floyd Dark Side Of The Moon boxer shorts.

Diminutive female rapper Yo-Landi probably stole the show in many a young man's eye, though, as she handled the mic almost as frequently as Ninja. For "Rich Bitch," Yo-Landi did a quick wardrobe change and came out in extremely tight gold spandex pants and fur-lined coat. She even jumped ass-first to the front of the stage, telling the front row to give her butt a hearty slap. Since she's a woman of an indeterminate age with a freakishly methed-out face in a lithe 16-year-old body, she's about as odd a sex symbol as you might find these days. The dudes were digging it, though.

Unexpectedly, Die Antwoord proved over the hour-long set that they were quite adept at interacting with the crowd, from the aforementioned butt slapping to Ninja grabbing a few glowsticks from the crowd. At one point, a young man found himself on stage, looking perilously close to dropping his trousers in front of Yo-Landi, only to have the performer playfully push him back into the pit.

Ninja frequently made reference to Montreal, but admitted during the set he had no idea where that was, further playing on his dead-eyed Johannesburg suburbanite-meets-gangsta persona. Besides the accent and occasional expression such as the terrific crowd singalong "Jou Ma Se Poes In 'N Fishpaste Jar," there really isn't anything particularly South African about Die Antwoord. There were a couple of vuvuzelas in the crowd, but musically, the DJ beats (pretty much all pre-recorded given the DJ spent more time dancing than noodling on his laptop) carry the international flag of Ableton.

So was any of this real? Are Die Antwoord an online anonymity-to-infamy success story, or just a clever new marketing technique? After witnessing two very real people give a sold-out crowd of music fans a hell of a party, one can only surmise that real or not, it doesn't matter anymore.