MUSIC
Yazoo, Clyde Auditorium, Glasgow
Simon Stuart
*****
In the small but perfectly formed canon of great synthesiser duos, Yazoo are a glorious oddity: a short-lived (just 18 months) early-eighties experiment that combined the belting blues vocals of Alison Moyet with the music-box melodies of Vince Clarke to spectacular success. They spawned one mega-hit, Only You, and arguably the greatest synthpop single of the eighties, Nobody's Diary, before pulling the plug on something approaching perfection.

It was Nobody's Diary that began Wednesday night's reunion concert, equal parts sequenced sparsity and human pain. The skeletal Clarke stood impassive behind his Mac laptop and miniature keyboard; Moyet, fabulous in pigtails and head-to-toe black, was a heartbroken teenager again. It was, in every way, beautiful.

This is not a nostalgia tour. It is two musicians with unfinished business, reminding themselves (and the world) of the connection they made. It is as much about Clarke and Moyet as it is the music: when, for no reason, they embraced for a moment before a blistering, spellbinding Too Pieces, the crowd cheered, delighted. And throughout the set they shared our glee: Moyet skipping and grinning, Clarke trying, with less and less success, not to let the skull-mask slip into a smile.

They made only two albums, which means that over an hour and a half they played pretty much every song they ever wrote. Some have been given a spring-clean but fundamentally these stately creations were offered in their original form, and sounded in many cases even more modern than they did in 1982. A jaw-dropping performance of I Before E Except After C, during which the duo disappeared, handing centre-stage position to a four-track reel-to-reel tape machine, was the sound of the future that should have been.