Techno put on a tie, its best dress shoes and a nice pair of pants on Friday evening at London's Southbank Centre. Promising new collaborations were premiered in between Carl Craig, Francesco Tristano, Moritz von Oswald, Matmos, Bugge Wesseltoft, Henrik Schwarz, DJ Sprinkles & Andras Fox; old hands reminded us why they've played together for years; masters of the techno-verse found a way to make old tricks new again. And afterwards we all danced like we weren't in the "largest single-run arts centre in the world."

Bugge Wesseltoft & Henrik Schwarz started things in the concert hall. Wesseltoft is used to such contexts: he's a jazz pianist by trade and often performs his compositions to crowds that clap appreciatively from their seats. Schwarz? Not so much. The previous Saturday he was on stage at Fabric, likely getting screamed at to play harder by drunken clubbers unaffected by his melodic house music. Both are clearly keen to expand their boundaries, Wesseltoft having played alongside French techno giant Laurent Garnier and Schwarz recently helping put together a mix CD that spanned the past 50 years of minimalist music. In practice that meant long, drawn-out improvisations from the two that began from, effectively, nothing but a riff or fragment that slowly built to a climax. Each piece had a similar structure as a result, but it was fascinating to see just how the two got there, especially when both left their respective piano or Ableton comfort zones.



Andras Fox came on immediately after, filling in the space between acts all night long with selections from the crate he brought to the Academy. He's been wowing us over at the RBMA offices with some of his rare finds and his exquisite taste. Even though he was only providing background music this night, he's one to watch out for.

As you might expect from a duo that has performed together for nearly two decades, Matmos — Martin Schmidt and Drew Daniel — provided the most assured concert hall performance of the evening. They know better than anyone that electronic music needs to be performative. And they obliged by showing us exactly what each drum hit, mic mumble and piano tinkle meant to their two lengthy compositions. Far from the buttoned-up show that their hyper-conceptual full-lengths might suggest, Schmidt ended the duo's first song by sweating it out on the drums to ecstatic effect.



Following Daniel and Schmidt was the trio that we'd all been waiting for: Carl Craig, Moritz Von Oswald and Francesco Tristano. Err... quartet. They were quickly joined by David Brutti, wielding a sizeable bass saxophone, but it was a welcome surprise. Brutti fitted perfectly into the expert mix of swirling electronics offered up by Craig – which were manipulated throughout by the dapper Von Oswald – and the piano accompaniment of Tristano. The group only played for about 35 minutes, but the standing ovation at the end indicated that they could have played for much, much longer.



The other half, however, probably couldn't wait to get to outside of the concert hall. There was a mixed response to nearly all of the acts that played to the sit-down audience, but everyone seemed to agree on DJ Sprinkles, who was already dropping tributes (Carl Craig's remix of Von Oswald from the early '90s) and plenty of his own material (B2B a particular favorite) to an audience that was more than ready to get down. His unique (in this day and age, at least) technique of actually letting tracks play out from beginning to end made us realize that sometimes it's more about the music and less about the person playing it. Imagine that!
 

 

 

 


Matmos (Matador, Baltimore) - Live from London - Royal Festival Hall
Bugge Wesseltoft & Henrik Schwarz Duo (Innervisions, Jazzland, Berlin, Oslo) - Live from London - Royal Festival Hall
Carl Craig, Francesco Tristano & Moritz von Oswald (Detroit, Barcelona, Berlin) - Live from London - Royal Festival Hall