Kraftwerk at Tate Modern, night eight: Tour de France - The Guardian (blog)

The curtains go up and we're bathed in (what else?) blue, white and red lights as Kraftwerk launch into Tour de France, ending their eight-day stint at Tate Modern's Turbine Hall.

As has been the case for so many of these shows, tonight is all about spectacle – something that electronic music has come to know a thing or two about over the years. The 3D visuals deliver an same awe-inspiring effect akin to seeing Chemical Brothers use those infamous green lasers for the first time at V festival in 2008, or when Twitter exploded over Beyoncé's light show at Glastonbury 2011.

It's a clever trick Kraftwerk are playing here. By dislocating our understanding of the club experience – removing us from the sweat-filled raves/superclubs of the capital, and putting us in an art institution – they make the point that electronic music has gravitas: as artistic a medium as any. For a generation of fans used to the Beckettian style of live dance shows – where nothing much happens, all night long – this, in contrast, was a multi-sensory and hypnotic offering, illustrating just how far you can push the format of one man and his Mac.

This is a shift that has been percolating in bass music recently, from Benga's four-keyboard, laser-heavy show to TEED's confetti cannons and Flying Lotus' 3D light cages. Dan Deacon's recent live show in Leeds where he made the crowd run around the outside of the venue might be taking it a step too far, but you get the point.

Not that Kraftwerk are (or ever were) about being on trend. DJs have amped up their onstage personalities recently (see DJ Rodigan stepping out from behind the decks to dance with the crowd) but Kraftwerk remain firmly in the school of low-key artists, spending the majority of tonight's set almost completely still while playing with military precision. They don't need to do much more. Not when the flying yellow and red capsules fall into the audience during Vitamin, or the fizzing bubbles float across the Turbine Hall during AeroDynamik.

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Tour De France doesn't sound at all dated. Although their most recent album, it's still a decade old and it's astonishing to witness just how in touch the group are with contemporary dance music.

In fact, they reflect the thrill of what is exciting about bass music in all its forms – there are echoes of house, techno and even dubstep (minus the drops) to be found here, from the ambient and slick voiceovers of Tour de France to the perfectly placed synth stabs and panting breath on Elektro Kardiogramm. The fact the latter song's crisp vocal stamps reference "beats per minute" seems particularly relevant tonight, discussions about BPM have become part of the dialogue of contemporary dance music fans. Grime for a long time was defined by its speed (140 BPM) whereas new-wave pop comes in at 150 BPM and shifting house tempos range from 110-120 BPM. Such conversations are no longer the exclusive preserve of producers and techno-geeks.

At times Kraftwerk seem like pioneers, at others they just seem to delight in doing what others are doing, just that little bit better – the sound that tiny bit clearer, the space more grandiose. But crucially this joining of the dots between past and present electronic music is fun. Around me fans (including a fair few Valentine's Day couples) are mimicking the band's jerky dancing and singing along: "We are the robots!" Thirty-nine years on from Autobahn – where this series of startling gigs began – we're all slaves to the robotic sounds they championed.