Cluster / Tortoise – Royal Festival Hall, London 22/11/09

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The relaxed, muted trumpet of Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue mingles pleasantly with the polite hubbub of no-doubt witty conversation as we take our seats for what threatens to be an evening of collective chin-stroking par excellence. A huge projected banner reminds us that we are here at the behest of Radio 3 and the London Jazz Festival, so presumably moshing and stage-diving are off the menu. Tonight it’s all about crafstmanship and rigour as Chicago’s giants of post-rock (and some would argue its original progenitors) Tortoise unleash themselves on the South Bank, armed with recent album Beacons of Ancestorship, their new arsenal of rhythms, resolutions and clusters.

And fittingly it is grandfatherly grandmasters of Krautrock electronica Cluster themselves, who take to the stage first. Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Dieter Moebius give off a professorial, summer-school-in-sound-engineering-at-Darmstadt vibe, frowning at one another over a table laden with dimly-perceived digital bric-a-brac, leaning forward to click a mouse here or tweak a fader there. Hazy, pastoral electronica shimmers from their many small, black boxes of tricks, as above them a washed-out videotape of a rough-hewn country house appears, an old man in dungarees (Roedelius?) occasionally emerging and disappearing from its basement. An innocuous enough image made startlingly sinister by the delicate bells and distant whispers buried in Cluster’s densely layered sonic fog (I am reminded of Tom Waits’ ‘What’s He Building In There?’). A shuffling, stuttering beat begins, and it occurs to me that Cluster are improvising a set which largely mirrors the many and varied young shavers of the IDM scene from the last 20 years or so, all of whom owe a debt to these guys for being pioneers the genre. The set sounds a bit Warp Records, a bit Global Communication (or Global Underground for that matter), but oddly, it doesn’t actually sound like Cluster: at least not the Cluster of their 1970s heyday.

As piercing white lights frame our two elder statesmen, audible sparks fly up from the speakers and a woman’s voice begins an indecipherable incantation. From nowhere, Tortoise stroll onstage, and immediately begin softening and humanising the stark digital outcroppings of Cluster’s sound: a swell of shuffling drums, a tinge of marimba or guitar being flicked lightly on to the harsh surfaces like paint. As the two units build layer upon layer of sound, it calls to mind gathering stormclouds over a beach, finally slowing and tapering into silence like a clock running down and out.

Cluster and Tortoise emerge from the wings together after the interval too, but it doesn’t feel as fresh or urgent this time: it might have been a good idea for Tortoise just to stick around after the first set and go into their main set with no interval, since Cluster’s re-appearance seems a little gimmicky and tacked on. It soon ceases to matter, however, since as soon as the avuncular Germans take their leave, to enthusiastic, and deserved applause, Tortoise immediately hurl themselves into a full-tilt rendition of ‘Gigantes’, Beacons of Ancestorship’s most complex, expansive track, intricate lines of pure rhythm overlapping until a nagging, intruding synth-stab opens a door into the song’s darkly emotional second half. ‘High Class Slim Came Rolling In’ prowls up on a tide of growling bass and squelchy synth, even more sleazy (as sleazy as math-rock ever gets anyway) as its recorded incarnation. ‘Minors’ is next, all Columbo-theme keyboard and West-Coast jazz guitar, followed by ‘Monica’, the sound of Tupac’s ‘California Love’ being physically brutalised by two drummers. This segues neatly into the summery, wistful ‘In Sarah, Mencken, Christ, And Beethoven There Were Women And Men’ (ye dig, hepcat?) which draws whoops and hollers after each featured instrument (just like a proper jazz gig!)

As if to remind us that they’re not just here for the smooth, soulful things in life, John McEntire (resplendent in a brown suede waistcoat) takes the drums as the guitars clang like steel girders and the synth sends out sheets of dark, hollow noise for ‘Doteyes’, one of the band’s most minimal, intense numbers. McEntire’s drumming is hypnotic: metronomic and monotonous one moment, then frantic and impassioned in the blink of an eye, his face contorting with the strain. This slides straight into ‘Eros’ another exercise in pure rhythm, the guitars and squelchy synth used as percussion instruments as much the drums vibes or marimba.

It should be pointed out at this point that Tortoise are hugely impressive to behold simply as virtuoso musicians. McEntire, Dan Bitney and John Herndon in particular dazzle with their multi-instrumental prowess: all take their seat at the drums (often both kits at once), and all have a go at keyboards, guitar and the various percussion instruments strewn about the stage, while alternating guitarists/bassists Jeff Parker and Doug McCombs keep it tight and focused without being needlessly flashy, occasionally getting a chance to wig out in true axe-hero fashion, as Parker does with great abandon in the extended outro of ‘Prepare Your Coffin’.

They end the main set with the glassy, Grand Canyon-sized ‘Crest’, shredding the outro into an improv freak-out, before returning after the briefest time to ask us what we want to hear for an encore: a heartfelt cry of ‘ANYTHING!’ provokes a chuckle from both crowd and band. A sweetly, hazily atmospheric ‘I Set My Face To The Hillside’ follows, before they finish with the mournful, hesitant ‘Charteroak Foundation’, Parker’s guitar reluctantly, jerkily leading the band on a melancholy road trip at twilight. Tortoise may straddle the line between post/math/whatever-rock and contemporary jazz, but as dry as that may sound they kick like a mule in a live setting, as tight and mesmerising a unit as you are likely to see. Not for them the indulgent, hacky meandering of similarly jazz-inflected outfits (*cough* Mars Volta *cough*): they deliver ferociously, on every level. Chins may have been stroked this evening, but a fair few minds will have been blown at the same time.