I’d been wondering how the two members of The Books could recreate their perfect patchwork live on stage; I came to the conclusion it probably couldn’t be done. It was both a relief and a disappointment that they didn’t exactly attempt to, playing guitar and cello (no banjo!) over pre-programmed loops and samples of people shouting out craziness.  Instead it was to be left to the visuals to take most of the strain of having to impress us, and impress us they did, with junk shop footage cut and stitched into the very fabric of the music.

Before all that visual excitement we had the excitable visual designer Kim Hiorthoy (probably being as well known for his groundbreaking sleeves for the Rune Grammofon label as for his music).  He played a set so danceable that it would have been almost impossible not to throw shapes. In fact, the only conceivable circumstance I can conceive of in which this would not happen would be in front of a crowd all fastened into their seats in the staid surroundings of the South Bank.

Still, he evidently enjoyed it, frugging away betwixt blank faces and blank screen.  I was looking forward very much to some visual stimulation from such an artist; such an absence made me consider starting a riot, but Hiorthoy was so into what he was doing I don’t think he would even have noticed.

The Books’ sixteen song set was in the main a set of swatches from The Wire’s album of 2005 Lost and Safe, and 2003’s Lemon Of Pink; those hoping for a raft of new material would have to join banjophiles amongst the ranks of the frustrated.  We were treated to just one new song, seemingly designed for live performance, in which the tempo of the music and the video were intrinsically linked in terms of the frame rate per second and the duration of the notes played (quarter notes, eighth notes etc); the quicker and shorter the notes, the faster the video, and/or vice versa.

The older songs hadn’t undergone any dramatic musical transformation (perhaps a bit more space was allowed for Paul De Jong’s marvellous cello work); the delight was in seeing the attention to detail which delivered such impressive marriage of speech’s rhythm to music (as emphasised by the projection of the single syllables of “Smells like Content” onto the screen) extended further into video.  “That Right Ain’t Shit” is sync’ed to a bunch of mormons taking their hats off, while preachers dance to “Take Time”. “Be Good To Them Always” features a deliciously humourous jump cut from freckled arm to a black petanque-festooned beach; in “Tokyo” a barely discernible click is highlighted with lightning flash.  On the aforementioned new song, the video initially plays back and forth, back and forth; by the second or third replay you pick out a blink and a wave cut just so to the beat.  Fastidious stuff.

The whole was stitched shut by a cover of Nick Drake’s “Cello Song” - a beauty; sounding as if it had been written for them.  As these humble chaps unthreaded their needles and packed up, I was reminded of a very different show which walked a similar line between musical and visual performance.  Like Kraftwerk before them, any misgivings I’d had about what was and was not being played by the performers seemed entirely superfluous given the meticulous thought and precision displayed in the output.