Tony Allen and Jeff Mills
Barbican, London
 

TECHNO, founded in Detroit, was inspired by various black music genres including house, soul, funk and jazz and with their incorporation into electronic music, a new sound was born.

It’s against that background that this latest of many projects by Detroit’s very own Jeff Mills and legendary drummer and Afrobeat co-founder Tony Allen was conceived, as a marriage of analogue and digital.

They open with the decidedly jazzy Locked and Loaded, the first tune from their joint album Tomorrow Comes The Harvest, the perfect Afrofuturist backdrop to a performance that sees Mills bashing out beats on his Roland TR-909 drum machine as Allen hits cymbals and snares.

Joined onstage by keyboardist Jean Philippe Dary and later guests including a saxophonist, proceedings have an improv-jam feel.

At one point the unusually dressed Mills, who swaps black with a Hawaiian shirt, even more unusually addresses the crowd — most have never heard him speak before —  to admit they don’t have a plan and are just going with the flow.

Indeed, there are moments when it feels as if the dynamic duo are building energy before momentum peters out unexpectedly rather than crescendoing to the dizzying heights that many in the crowd are clearly hoping for. The occasional whistle and cheer can be heard whenever the pace picks up.

But there is one final treat for the techno fans, as Mills and Allen return for a no-nonsense dance-off of drum rhythms and techno beats that has the crowd on its feet.