BY DAVID DOWNS

A combination of the Internet and a fleet of biodiesel buses brought more than 18,000 indie and electronic music lovers from around the world to the second annual Treasure Island Music Festival in San Francisco September 19 and 20th. Predominantly blue skies and a strong San Francisco Bay breeze gave way to Saturday night headliners Justice, who delivered yet another pummeling, heavy metalectro set to more than 8,000 rabid fans before Sunday headlining Nashville rockists The Raconteurs sold out the 10,000 capacity festival.

Independent promoters Noise Pop and Another Planet Entertainment booked 28 bands from mostly independent labels like Vice, XL, and Ninja Tune -- nimble new labels who've benefited from Internet-enabled marketing and distribution. Now ten years into the downloading revolution, the successful agglomeration of mid-level Internet bands has become a powerful festival force, says festival organizer Jordan Kurland, who's seen the White Stripes go from the indie halls of San Francisco to the world stage; ditto for previous TIMF headliner Modest Mouse.

However, the event wasn't without its flaws. Treasure Island has been on lock-down since the '40s. The traffic impacts alone prevent city officials from approving large-scale events. That is, until the seasoned pros at Noise Pop in conjunction APE promised no traffic. They proposed fans park in San Francisco and board biodiesel shuttles for the one-mile excursion onto the island.

"This is the most painless experience, ever," remarked one attendee as the pleather-upholstered shuttle drove through San Francisco's famed multimedia gulch. Current TV ran on mounted bus monitors as thousands of iPhone owners cruised past the offices of Wired Magazine and World of Warcraft creator Blizzard. But those same fans cried foul on the return trip at midnight. Waits of an hour or longer accompanied the end of Justice's set and the associated rush to exit.

Logistics aside, Justice drew the most exuberant reactions, followed by a three-way dance off from Hot Chip, Goldfrapp, and Tegan and Sara. Conversely, Spiritualized's prized harmonies were disentangled by bay gusts and their psychedelic freakout finale ended to no claps or cheers. Vampire Weekend had to ask the crowd if they were having a good time, and Tegan and Sarah couldn't stop talking about vampires.

The stereotypically chatty set from the twin lesbian indie rockers mused on the film The Lost Boys and Treasure Island's similarities, given the 60-feet Ferris wheel and urban skyline. The two expertly drilled "Walking With A Ghost" into everyone's head yet again, but year-old Rihanna single "Umbrella" came out soggy at best. Sarah said her other band members were ugly, Tegan disavowed the statement, and "I'm not unfaithful, but I stray" became the most wry lyric of the week. TV On the Radio also proved competent, capable, and boring. Both do better in clubs.

But some people owned their space. SF trio The Dodos, rocking the acoustic guitar, trap kit, and trash can/ xylophone, became the surprise badasses of the weekend. Dude went bloody fingerpicking and shredding beneath the vocal harmony, which was also sung by the drummer, who also played tambourine with his shoe. Unlike Spiritualized, The Dodos' blue-rooted, uptempo indie jams are impervious to context. You can play them on a ringtone and it would still sound dope.

San Francisco veteran scratcher DJ Mike Relm got forced into going sans video screen for the first time in three years Saturday. Fresh off DJ duties for the Blue Man Group and Tony Hawk's Boom Boom HuckJam tour, Relm's audio-video, all-singing/all-dancing, touchscreen-based set got its best reception when he just let Rage Against the Machine ride out. That is a special kind of burn. But Relm rolled with it, drank some beer, and the act spoke to the heart of his crowd-first ethos.

UK sound sculptor Amon Tobin chopped and screwed his latest Foley Room into tricky dubstep, pummeling drum and bass and slinky downtempo -- digital showmanship equivalent to the superb analogue jams of Brooklyn afrofunk act Antibalas. Antibalas' cover of reggae staple "Rat Race" proved an apt tune amid the demise of America's financial system as we knew it. Even more amusing, the thought that the same coal-fired power plants fueling these bands' distro were sinking the island on which they played. TI is a repurposed military base built on trash just feet off the water line, and there was no band pulling more juice than French production duo Justice.

The Vice-signees are fresh off a perverse MySpace sponsored tour leaving in their wake scores of E'd-out 14 year-olds rolling on the sidewalk. They are not a band for TV, or the Radio, but along with TV On the Radio, they've found their 100,000 hard core fans worldwide who'll sustain them indefinitely.

Justice Video:

They are the future of music, because the excess profits of the old star system have vanished like AIG, says Fulbright scholar, Yale economist, and Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law Dr. Mark Cooper. The big four music corporations once had culture in a full-nelson until Napster gave it an out. Warner and Co. were gouging consumers with a star-system, price-fixing, a distribution oligopoly, and the strategic assassination of the singles market. The net, iPods, iTunes, MP3s, Myspace and all that truly did level the playing field - destroying the star system, and ending the distribution monopoly. Cooper says we're seeing a concurrent rise in a new middle class of artists that didn't exist after the '30s, when industrialism allowed for an historic bubble in the consolidation of the means of cultural production.

"The record companies kept winning the court cases and losing the war. In the end they were just overwhelmed by the tech," says Cooper, who presents a paper on the topic this week at the Telecommunications Policy Research Conference.

Yet the downside to the net revolution is apparent, too. DJ Mike Relm, among the most tech savvy of the bunch says his nickel has moved. Record sales are dead and new places to get that nickel are hard to come by. "I have to face it: my audience might be the same people with the know-how to get it for free. I know I do."

Moreover, Net music entrepreneurs like Jason Jurgens of the Owl Magazine say endless myspaceing and facebooking and the acceleration of trends has done to music what fast food did to regional cuisine. He foresees the birth of a "Slow Music" Movement -- not necessarily slow in its tempo, or course, but in its approach and appreciation.

It makes sense that the backlash is already coming from places like Treasure Island, situated where it is. These bands played for two days at the dead center of a region shredding the music industry exactly the way Justice performed Cross Saturday night. The young'uns threw that shit into the wood-chipper, and reassembled the pieces live, on the fly, sometimes nastily, but always to devastating and maximal effect.