Review: Grandbrothers, The Lantern

It’s not often that an audience walks into a venue and one of the first things they see on stage is something large and possibly wooden, perhaps a small armoire, covered by a pale blue quilt cover. Sunday, February 28 at The Lantern was one such occasion. 

The wooden thing remained covered throughout the opening numbers of Luke Daniels’ Americana-tinged acoustic set. While the songs were pleasant enough in a Ryan Adams way and delivered confidently they were nothing out of the ordinary. However, we’d been told at the start of the set that Daniels would later reveal what was under the quilt cover. So far, so mildly interesting. 

Mildly interesting promptly veered into the realms of genuinely interesting when the covers came off and the audience could see that beneath them was a bizarre, contraption straight out of the best ever dreams of a steampunk fan. The said contraption was a Polyphon machine, best described as the precursor of the common or garden record player, though as it used metal discs measuring 19” playing the music, rather less portable. 

Daniels took the time to explain what the machine was, how it worked (clockwork) and how it was part of a compositional project he was working on.  The music composed for the Polyphon, and etched on metal discs, was played through a laptop and then via a loop station. The music was startling, discomfiting, multi-layered, with pretty melodies and played completely off the cuff. It was hugely impressive and worth investigating if the opportunity should arise.

Dusseldorf electronica duo Grandbrothers’ 2015 debut Dilation is one of those all too rare things: an album which stands up to repeated listening over a number of months. However, as is often the case with electronica/dance artists, the niggling question asked will invariably be “Can they match it live or will it be just a bit dull?”

Luckily, the answer was a resounding yes. Grandbrothers didn’t just match their elegantly melodic, motorik-driven recordings, they exceeded them.  

Grandbrothers’ music is built on a solid foundation of minimalist piano motifs – think Philip Glass circa the Photographer – plus electronic beats and epic washes of sound which could err on the side of trip hop but thankfully don’t. 

The music is highly structured and complex as the beats, additional notes and tunes etc. are not pre-programmed or sampled but played live. All of the sounds that Lukas Vogel, the laptop wizard, works with come direct from the grand piano played by his cohort Erol Sarp. The duo set up the grand piano with additional hammers for the strings, wood and metal frame. The hammers are triggered from the laptop, then the sounds are live sampled, altered, broken up and played back in time with Sarp’s melodic piano lines. 

This may all sound a little chin-scratching and serious expressions muso. It wasn’t. Grandbrothers delivered a stunning set ranging from subtle, romantic ambient music that would suit a concert hall setting to banging dance tuneage that would have brought any club crowd up. 

The majority of the set was drawn from their album – the stand out tracks being Wuppertal, Naïve Rider and encore Ezra Was Right. However, the new pieces they played – a little harder-edged and more dance focused – were positively received by the crowd too. 

Dusseldorf’s most famous musical export is the legendary Kraftwerk. Grandbrothers may not have reached their levels of excellence and genius but they are doing something special. Fans of Caribou, Nils Frahm, Kiasmos, Olafur Arnalds and the Erased Tapes label should certainly give them a listen.