Tarwater

I'll confess, I'm a little disoriented. I visited the Museo della Scienza e della Tecnologia a couple of times at a very young age, so it's very easy for me to associate it with school field trips, and quite a bit harder to picture it as the venue for a cool event like the TDK Dance Marathon. In truth, the Sala Biancamano is just a hall detached from the museum itself, yet the planes in the courtyard, an ancient dugout canoe and the old diving suit on display behind austere double glass panels only heighten the bittersweet flavor of this romantic leap through time. A touch of nostalgia, perhaps drowned in the warm pink-red mood lighting, maybe tucked away in the branded, ultramodern chill of some sleek, sinuous installation, and certainly, inevitably, stuck to the music of Tarwater. A steady flow of people more interested in the glittering social parade than in anything else, the contrived, obligatory back-slapping of a glossy industry meet-up, the drinks, the disposable plastic plates straight out of some "happy hour", the super-trendy stretchy TDK T-shirts, tech gadgets everywhere: when Bernd Jestram and Ronald Lippok kick off the show, nicely framed amid the evocative projections unfolding behind them, all that's really present is the distracted, empty air of pure escapism.

A laptop, a handful of little digital gadgets, Lippok's languid, glassy voice, but above all the shredding bass of a surprising Jestram: the approach here is that of two genuine musicians who nonetheless wield the same hammer that has already torn down the fences between electronics and rock'n'roll — philosophically not far, in other words, from Eno's old notion of the "non-musician". Tarwater have a brand-new record to promote, a pop record written with grace, restraint and precision, a damn beautiful record. The two Berliners are well aware of it, so much so that they devote a full ten of the thirteen tracks in the set to "The Needle Was Travelling": there's plenty to be proud of in this handful of songs, halfway between a classy American-bar DJ set and romantic computer arpeggios in Kraftwerk style — the kind that convey an unconditional love for, and allegiance to, the German school, which has absolutely nothing to envy in its Anglo-American counterpart.

Don't expect any dazzling detours from the script — avant-pop hardly lends itself to that — and indeed the opening one-two mirrors the album's own incipit, kicking off with the punchy pop funk of "Across The Dial", followed by the notwist-esque charge of "Stone". First surprise: Lippok's languid, clinical delivery actually thrives in the live format, as becomes clear with "Seven Of Nine", the song that marks the end of the warm-up and catapults us straight into the venue's muffled lights... "and we walk out of this darkness, and we walk into the light", Ronald reminds us, present and just melancholy enough to draw the first round of applause, which he returns with a very Italian "grazie".

Up to this point the setlist mirrors the album track for track, and that's not a bad thing at all, believe me: the instrumental "Entry" (an evocative outtake from the Cure's "Seventeen Seconds", pepped up with horn arrangements worthy of David Sylvian?) leads us into the main course — the cover of Minimal Compact's "Babylonian Tower", in which Lippok's heavily spoken-word vocal delivery is so at ease it breathes in cascades of invigorating sensuality. Tarwater's music is a cold stream running between your ankles, swelling without you ever noticing: even those who were distracted early on finally drop the small talk and lock in, attentively following the duo's open-heart manipulations.

It really is incredible how Bernd Jestram plays bass, as we said. I never would have guessed it, honestly, not because I doubted his abilities, but because this is the kind of live show where you expect just about anything except technical prowess. And yet Jestram, with the scowling, couldn't-care-less expression of a German take on Nick Nolte, traces clean, far-from-simple basslines: a flesh-and-blood machine among the human machines cradling the singer's drifting voice through the air. Between a couple of nods to the acclaimed album "Dwellers On Threshold", "Now", but above all the enchanting nocturne of "Imperator Victus", and another that refreshes the trip-hop of "Animal Suns & Atoms" ("All Of The Ants Left Paris"), the show closes with yet another exercise in style lifted straight from "The Needle Was Travelling", which here takes on the rubbery, watery shape of "90 Days". No encore, and that's a wrap, immortalized in the modest smiles of Bernd Jestram and Ronald Lippok: if the mission was to grab the attention of the possibly many attendees who had barely even heard their name before, then consider it fully accomplished.

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