Modeselektor – The Forum, London, 07/10/11

Modeselektor are more than a techno outfit. The good-time duo have transcended the barriers of the genre to become the electronic artists everyone likes, from your city banker friend to that guy you know with the irritatingly encyclopaedic music knowledge.

Somewhere between their second and third studio albums they stopped being ‘just a band’ and became mainstream stars – helped along, one imagines, by a combination of their increasingly ubiquitous Modeselektion festival stages, and their highly regarded Moderat project.

Despite the duo having completed their ascendancy, and having cemented themselves well and truly into the firmament, Kentish Town’s Forum was only about two thirds full tonight. In any other venue this could have put something of a kibosh on proceedings, but here it doesn’t matter. Somewhat surprisingly, and to promoters Lovebox and Bang The Box’s credit, it turns out the Forum is actually a brilliant club venue. It’s split in two, with space for milling at the back and space for flailing down the front – all while facing a beautiful proscenium arch stage.

The set consists almost entirely of tracks from the duo’s latest record Monkeytown – an album that oscillates between relentless tech (‘Evil Twin’) and unashamed pop (‘Berlin’). It starts slowly, with an extended rendition of ‘Blue Clouds’ – its clattering percussion and low tempo rendering it virtually completely undanceable.

Gradually, though, the set picks up. ‘Pretentious Friends’ is as hilarious as on record, while ‘Grillwalker’ is a bouncing delight. Meanwhile ‘Shipwreck’, one of two Monkeytown tracks to feature Thom Yorke, is given an entirely new slant; the frisson of danger that the recorded version aims for, but misses, permeates the track live. The high-contrast video of James Bond speedboat chases in the background probably helps. Then finally ‘Green Lights’ proves a touching, panoramic closer, with the delightfully dapper Sebastian Szary taking a rare turn on vocals.

But the most notable thing about a Modeslektor live show isn’t actually the music, or the visuals. It’s the duo themselves. There’s no po-faced Berlin cool here; just two friends pissing around on stage, doing what makes them happy – and, as a result, making their audience happy too. As it happens they are fantastically talented songwriters – but it wouldn’t really matter if they weren’t. Their performances are so shot through with energy, and so lacking in pretence or selfishness, that they could be playing a recording of the German tax code and it wouldn’t really matter. A fantastically enjoyable experience.