The EMP Pop Conference—theme: "Dance Music Sex Romance: Pop and the Body Politic"—finally got properly kicking yesterday (after what I thought was a lackluster keynote on Thursday and one relatively weak panel the next morning). Highlights included the Stranger's own Michealangelo Matos preaching and demonstrating the un-trainwreckable wonder that is the a capella of Chuck Robert's "My House," Douglas Wolk exploring the incorporeal nature of the club/radio DJ (in the first great structural gimmick of the weekend, Wolk presented his paper using pre-recorded, dis-embodied voices—also, the Apple!), and Jon Caramanica and Sean Fennessy on the absurd rise of Soulja Boy Tell 'Em.

All this is well and good, and you should head down to the EMP presently for another day stacked with great panels and presentations, but nothing's better after a long day of listening to critics theorize about dancing than to go out and actually fucking Dance to some Music (your Sex Romance results may vary), which is where last night's Broken Disco comes in. Last night's wonderfully odd-couple billing of minimal techno elder statesman Thomas Fehlmann and polyglot bass head Ghislain Poirier worked like a charm. Fehlmann kept a steady pulse of beautifully composed, blissful techno going for an hour and change, dancing and swaying and smiling like the coolest 50-something year-old DJ on the planet that he is. Then Poirier came out and changed the beat up (and then changed it up again and again) with a sweaty, relentless set of bass-heavy, global bounce, aided by Seattle's own DJ Collage on the mic, the crowd thinned out a bit (it was sardine canned for Fehlmann). I found the whole set—indeed both the headliners' sets—pretty damn irresistible, but things peaked for me with Poirier dropping Modeselektor (can't recall if it was "Black Box" or "Sucker Pin"—I always mix those two up) and then some blend of the Crookers remix of "Day & Nite" (just the descending, wobbling bass synth line, not the Kid Cudi vocals). The reinvigorated Broken Disco is killing it. If you're looking to go to Pop today and cap it off with some real live dancing afterwards, you have a lot of good options, but I would recommend: ECSC's Talcum at Baltic Room, Frankenboot at Rebar, and (cough, conflict of interest, cough) Ruff Gemz at Lo_fi, if not all three. (More events can be found via our complete music calendar listings.)