The stage of the Old Fire Station is sparsely set – three laptops, a sound mixer and a looming projector screen. Pan-European poetry collective Landschaft saunter onstage, their bright red boiler suits an arresting pop of colour, to begin a set in which spoken-word, ambient techno and uncanny visuals score the insecurities of identity, connection and a world torn by war.

Ulrike Almut Sandig (Berlin, Germany), and Grigory Semenchuk (Lviv, Ukraine) marry their onstage presence with their digital selves to striking and often unnerving effect. A live camera feed is employed throughout the show, their in-person performance an ever present layer over the music videos projected behind them. This is particularly well-employed in their opening track, also entitled 'Landschaft', in which Sandig expresses a defiant refusal of definition and celebration of the multiplicity of self.

The accompanying video shows Sandig and Semenchuk frozen in place amidst the bustle of urban streets, wearing green screen outfits onto which text, landscapes, Sandig’s own face are fleetingly projected. ‘I am the shadow for you to hide yourself beneath…I am a text, that begins to unravel just as it reaches an end’, she declaims both onstage and onscreen. The overlay of their live performance heightens this unsettling plurality, powerfully communicating the twin liberation and anxiety of fulfilling multiple archetypes both internally and externally enforced.

Indeed, this idea of flux and fluidity is present across the Landschaft repertoire. See also 'Flieger/ from the plane you see', in which Sandig muses on the freeing dislocation of plane travel and the arbitrary attachment of identity to place; ’down below, the highways shine/ up here, it’s us that shine/…if it’s here you have your child/what will you call it?/Asia? Almut? Alpha?’.

This takes on a feminist context in 'Wir Waren Hier', in which the speaker expresses a longing to be emancipated from prescriptive gender roles. ‘I want more from life than reading tea leaves made of chromosomes’, she declares, imagining her future mutual freedom with her partner as the propane and flame fuelling an untethered balloon. And it occurs perhaps most starkly in the tracks addressing the war in Semenchuk’s home country of Ukraine. In 'Zero Ukraine' this instability is anything but emancipatory, using the liminality of the figure 0, ‘without beginning or end/ contra or pro’ to draw attention to media obfuscation of the true extent of the conflict.

Semenchuk’s stripped-back, percussive production really allows Sandig’s otherwordly vocals to shine, the overlaying of harmony reminiscent of Imogen Heap. Her stage presence during each number is electric (pun intended); her voice, ethereal and rich, harmonises with her onscreen self in a strangely lovely digital communion, and her appearance in the video sequences exudes both dignified gravitas and cheeky irreverence. Semenchuk, though less prominent on the vocals, remains a charismatic force, combining his impassioned recorded lyrics with sardonic, deadpan asides.

The style of the accompanying videos by Produktion Waldstrasse (at least, the ones in live action) have a very handcrafted quality to them. Paper wigs, cardboard sets and cling film dresses abound; heavy use of green-screen and superimposed digital images lend them a punkish, early-days-of-the-internet flavour. It’s an endearing aesthetic, but one that is employed to mixed success; for more tongue-in-cheek, overtly humorous numbers like 'Guidance on Laughing at a Distance', it’s a great fit. However, the image of Semenchuk’s face green-screened onto a poodle or Sandig scampering for her life in a bunny suit veers too far on the side of silly to complement the tension of more heavy-hitting tracks like 'Wir Waren Hier' or 'Lexus'. A later music video from Semenchuk’s solo project as rapper BRAT later in the show is undoubtedly the strongest piece of the evening visually by virtue of its restraint. Directed by NassBay, its combination of minimalist religious iconography with the jerky, puppet-like choreography of its principal dancers provides a welcome tonic to the busy composition of the pieces preceding it.

Similarly, the translation by Karen Leeder is for the most part excellently done, but the use of British idioms in the mix feels somewhat jarring. It just hits the ear wrong to hear a peppy ‘just a mo’ in the middle of an anthem to the plight of erased Ukrainians, or the unfortunate-sounding phrase ‘leaking their feelings all over the shop’ in 'Wir Waren Hier'’s description of disaffected mothers. It feels too colloquial, and while it doesn’t deflate the tension of the pieces entirely, you can sense a little of the air going out.

All in all, however, Landschaft is a thought-provoking and profound audio-visual hour. Sandig and Semenchuk’s magnetism is certainly enough to carry us through any minor stylistic stumbles. Though production-wise it is a little rough around the edges, it rings perfectly true to the energy of its performers; chaotic, endearing and defiant.