Over the past 13 years, the rise of techno and house has had some strange side- effects. One is the elevation of the record producer from shadowy background facilitator to superstar performer. It has not been an entirely smooth transition. Shunted on to Top of the Pops to perform the latest dance hit, producers frequently cut uneasy figures. They fidget behind their synthesisers, wearing expressions that suggest they can't wait to get back to the quiet anonymity of the studio.
William Orbit is a perfect case in point. In recent years, the former ambient-house producer has masterminded Madonna's return to relevance with the trance-influenced Ray of Light album, as well as All Saints's multi-platinum Pure Shores and Blur's 13. Tonight, performing a series of new instrumental works as part of the Barbican's Elektronic festival, he looks desperately awkward, mumbling inaudibly into a microphone and literally running off stage at the end of the concert.
Sadly, the music performed by Orbit and his musicians - including brass, woodwind, a choir, and a drummer playing one of those tiny electronic kits last spotted when new romantic bands ruled the charts - is equally ungainly. One unnamed track lurches from dubby breakbeats to honking, jittery free jazz. Another features tootling oboes, a vibraphone and synthesised bleeping. It sounds exactly like the sort of background music used in nature films to signify that spring has sprung.
The Barbican's surroundings confer an arty furrowed-brow atmosphere on the evening - "That's a good, expensive silence," mutters Orbit between tracks - but the music itself seems unsure whether it is serious composition or easy-on-the-ear chill-out soundtrack. What should be futuristic and groundbreaking more readily evokes the past. The spectre of both Mike Oldfield and 1970s synthesiser behemoths Tangerine Dream lurks around the proceedings.
The loudest cheers are reserved for Orbit's trance reworking of Barber's Adagio For Strings, a hit single last year. Moved by the music, and clearly expecting others to follow, a solitary audience member leaps to his feet and begins dancing. Finding himself alone, he sheepishly sits down again - the perfect metaphor for an uncomfortable evening.
