Moderat at Glastonbury: The perfect synthesis of stadium-size electronics

“This is the first time we have ever played in the sunlight” Sascha Ring told the crowd at Glastonbury last Sunday with a wry smile. He had a point. Moderat’s music usually soundtracks dark clubs and stark concrete spaces. The gorgeous sun that was setting gently over the site’s undulating hills was an unusual backdrop for the Berlin trio’s cascading take on stadium-sized electronic music.

Moderat are the closest thing dance music has to a rock band right now. They tow the line between the grittiness of Berlin’s underground scene and the sweet melodies of Depeche Mode.

Pinning down exactly where they lie on the spectrum between electronic and traditional forms of music is difficult. They are not a production outfit who have taken to the road in order to interpret their songs live. Nor are they a live band seeking to introduce elements of dance music into their tracks.

What they are is one of the few groups that have genuinely achieved a synthesis of dance music and traditional rock and pop aesthetics. Dressed in black, you would expect them to adhere to the sullen stereotype of the heads-down techno DJ. In reality, the trio’s performance at the West Holts stage, however sweeping and dramatic, was at its core pure entertainment.

Maybe that’s why their music appeared to fit the festival stage so perfectly. Maybe that’s also why the trio seemed so at ease with the grand scale of the crowd they were performing to.

Sundays at Glastonbury are always a struggle. Dirty, tired punters endeavour to push through until Monday morning when the great exodus from Worthy Farm begins. Often this state of exhaustion leads to some of the most euphoric, ecstatic crowd responses of the weekend. Moderat was the dose of jubilant techno the crowd needed.

Only the night before Solange had filled the same slot warming up for The Jacksons. On Sunday Moderat were tasked with playing before Justice. Kicking off with ‘Ghostmother’ from their most recent album III, the Berlin-based trio demonstrated just how many top-notch tracks they have amassed over the last eight years. Opting for quality over quantity, Moderat stretched each cut to around the 10 minute mark. ‘Running’, ‘Eating Hooks’, ‘Rusty Nails’, and ‘Reminder’ were all given a showing, each one feeling familiar yet alien given the setting and the group’s tendency to improvise live.

Apparat’s slender, gazelle-like form swayed at the front of the stage whilst Gernot Bronsert and Sebastian Szary stood hunched over banks of equipment, subtly twisting the group’s well-known songs into strange new forms. During their closing track ‘Bad Kingdom’ a surging breakbeat ripped from KiNK’s ‘Pocket Piano (Breakbeat Mix)’ appeared underneath the original track’s sampled elephant noise. It was little touches like this and the genuine connection the group established with the crowd that illustrated just why Moderat deserved to be playing where they did - in front on thousands to a rapturous response.

Feeding off the screams of the crowd, Moderat had the West Holts stage moving in time to the their strange synthesis of pop and techno. It may not have been a headline set, but their hour-long performance was a masterclass in taking electronic music out of the club and into the sunlight.

You can watch back Moderat's performance via BBC iPlayer.

Alex Green is Mixmag's Weekend Editor. Follow him on Twitter here