The mayhem ‘Born Slippy’ provoked felt both poignant and cathartic: Underworld, at Usher Hall, reviewed

On the same night Underworld played the second of two shows at the Usher Hall, next door at the Traverse Theatre, This is Memorial Device was midway through a short run. Seeing both within a matter of hours, I felt an exchange of currents, a renewed awareness of the short distance we travel between euphoria and sorrow when we start mixing music and memory.

The short play, adapted and directed by Graham Eatough from the novel by David Keenan, concerns the brief, wayward life of a (fictional) 1980s cult band from Airdrie. We see how the group’s complicated yet charismatic personal dynamic, intense improvised music and quasi-occult power was once revered by a handful of diehards. And how, 40 years later, its legacy has been memorialised and mythologised on stage by the band’s ‘archivist’, played by Paul Higgins with a perfect mix of a true believer’s undying enthusiasm, distanced self-awareness and little-boy-lost poignancy.

Next door, the crowd at Underworld was also memorialising something: the glory days of their rave years.