Cybotron (live at The Barbican)

London
12  April 2019

Ah, an evening of pure Detroit electronica some thirty-five years or more after it first happened is a must-see. The atmosphere of The Barbican’s post apocalyptic Logan’s Run architectural design just added to the palpable excitement as I made my way towards the venue. This is Juan Atkins and Rik Davis’s Cybotron, not to be confused with the seventies Australian Berlin School artists with the same name. I really wasn’t quite sure what to expect as a live experience from the band, but something told me that it was going to be retro-futuristic in some way, and I certainly wouldn’t be disappointed.

When I arrived at the theatre, the stage was already covered in a thick layer of dry ice that blew around the venue constantly throughout the band’s set. After a while, some retro eighties-style lighted letters spelt out the name of the band as the three members entered the stage and stood motionless behind their keyboard setups.

As the band were constantly in a fog of dry ice for the entire gig, it was rather difficult to see exactly what they were doing. The whole set up kind of reminded me of Kraftwerk concerts, but in a strange way not really seeing the artists didn’t matter as it was the music we were all here for. To be honest though, Cybotron probably had one of the most sophisticated laser light shows I have ever seen. It was like a late seventies or early eighties laserium show as lights danced around the stage and the audience helping bringing our sci-fi dreams of the future into some strange reality, while the click of electronic music pulsed around us.

I had an idea that the concert would feature the band’s seminal 1983 work Enter quite heavily and the gig started with its heavy bass rhythm. The sound of the music was like melting the Yellow Magic Orchestra and Kraftwerk together and adding a sprinkling of dance beats to make one hell of a glorified whole. Synths snapped a chattered away, and they were also at points languid and drifting like a mid-seventies Tangerine Dream. “Clear” sounded wonderfully hypnotic, as did “Cosmic Cars”. This was the music the future was made for. It felt pristine at times, even robotic, but it still carried a sense of emotion.

“Industrial Lies” had a touch of Throbbing Gristle about it as its machine beat the audience mercilessly . All the while this was going, on lasers whirled above our heads like we are in some forgotten scene from Blade Runner. “R9” and “The Line” were like a beatific ballet mechanique as The Barbican hall throbbed to their deep bass synth sounds and the audience cried out with joy as the music and visuals engulfed them.

This kind of music now gets lumped into the synthwave or new retro bandwagon, artists who are looking to the future while leaning heavily on the eighties electronic music of the past. The fact that Cybotron were/are one of the originators of this music makes them very important indeed. The feeling they give off is of metropolises where spaceships hover in the air, flooded by neon lights in a constant, everlasting night-time. Cybotron’s techno hasn’t aged, and it’s as bright as when it was first created; and like Kraftwerk’s music, it now seems somewhat timeless.

As I made my way back through the winding concrete cityscape of The Barbican, I realised just what a perfect soundtrack Cybotron’s music is for this twentieth century place that also seems retro-futuristic for the twenty-first century. OK, I had witnessed the band, but because of the amount of dry ice I had not really seen them. This didn’t seem to matter, and in a weird way was in perfect keeping to the music they create. It was after all a futuristic concert performed in a futuristic venue, and the only thing missing was bumping into the odd replicant walking the rain-soaked streets on my way back.

The future is here (again).

-Gary Parsons-