What a treat - to sip a cup of assam in the Festival Hall ballroom while Senor Coconut y Su Conjunto play Kraftwerk cover versions - how modern can you get? If you never cared for the Dusseldorf innovators' oeuvre, which includes Showroom Dummies and Man Machine, you might dismiss the act, but the truth is that these early examples of electronic dance music are witty and stylish enough to bear their transformation into Latin-American cheese.
The band comprises seven white-shirted musicians plus Senor C himself - a coiffed 1970s icon in beige suit and sideburns, who coolly operates the sampled loops that provide the main pulse. Known as Uwe Schmidt to his mother, Coconut is a Chile-based percussionist and programmer from Frankfurt. The mainly Danish band add vocals, electric double bass, marimba, trumpet, tenor, congas and vibes/percussion; they really cook, with Brecker-ish sax breaks and whirring mallets. When Venezuelan singer Argenis Brito picked up the maracas, I was suddenly reminded of Jack Lemmon's delirious performance, in Some Like It Hot, of the great Edmundo Ros - and of every Latin band that was ever wheeled on to advance the plot of a movie, from Guys and Dolls to The Mask.
The strict tempos of ballroom dancing required musicians to play like automata. Kraftwerk's genius was to let the machines take the strain while remaking themselves as living sculptures. The double joke for Senor Coconut is that while the beat is a computerised given, his Danish compadres can have a ball, from the free-jazz pile-up of Autobahn to the extended vibes and timbales workout by the flame-haired virtuoso on Music Non-Stop.
There is a tendency for Kraftwerk's songs to sound quite similar in chord construction and lyrical content, so the band wisely ring the changes with feel and speed changes. But who would have thought The Robots would be such perfect material for Senor Coconut's agenda? Brito smiles his charming smile without a hint of irony and croons a line that Spielberg should have used in AI: "We are the robots and we dance the cha-cha-cha."
