What Is It Like to See And One Live?

Steve Naghavi Dances, and So Do You

Forget the image of a synth band standing dead still behind gear. And One live is a dance show, and Steve Naghavi is the engine of it, moving from the first beat to the last. When the band returned to Berlin and the wider German circuit in the 2020s, the thing reviewers kept pinning down was his motion: a 2023 Große Freiheit show in Hamburg was summed up by Naghavi's "first-class dancing," and the band has been described as heading "into the endless dance avant-garde" from its first appearance decades ago (Reflections of Darkness, December 2023). You are not there to watch someone tweak knobs. You are there to move, in a room where everyone else is already moving.

Deadpan Banter, All in German

Between the songs, Naghavi runs the room on talk, and the register is dry self-mockery rather than rock-star chest-beating. On the 2023 comeback run, as hall after hall sold out, he told the crowd the success "can't be because of my singing." He also uses the stage as a direct line to the fans, announcing band news mid-set (on that tour he told the room a new album was coming the following year). The catch for outsiders: almost all of it is in German. This is a German act playing to a German-speaking home crowd, and the comedy is part of the ticket. If you speak the language you get a stand-up set threaded through the music. If you don't, you get the songs and a lot of laughter you're on the outside of.

Half the Set Is Covers

Here is the thing that surprises first-timers most: a big chunk of an And One club set is covers. Not one or two, but a running raid on the entire 80s synth-pop and new-wave canon. Across their live history they have played New Order's "Blue Monday," The Human League's "Don't You Want Me," Simple Minds' "Don't You (Forget About Me)," a-ha's "The Sun Always Shines on T.V.," David Bowie's "Let's Dance," Tears for Fears' "Shout," Billy Idol's "Rebel Yell" and Depeche Mode's "Just Can't Get Enough" (setlist.fm). The reason it works, rather than feeling like a wedding band, is that this crowd knows every one of those songs by heart, so the covers turn the room into a scene-wide sing-along instead of a passive recital. The single best prep you can do is brush up on the originals. And One's own DNA is Depeche Mode plus the harder Belgian EBM of Front 242, so the covers sit naturally next to their catalog rather than clashing with it.

A Home Crowd for the Schwarze Szene

The audience is the German dark-electro scene, and they came to dance, not to gawk. Many have followed the band since the 1990s, and they mix with the broader 80s-synthpop crowd that the covers pull in. The reviewer for Reflections of Darkness reckoned And One draw "basically half of the German Schwarz scene." Physically, that means a moving floor rather than a crush or a mosh pit: this is electro-pop, so people dance in place, shout the German choruses, and the mood stays celebratory. If your only reference for German electronic acts is the pyro-and-flames spectacle of Rammstein or the American industrial catharsis of Nine Inch Nails, reset your expectations. This is warmer, poppier, closer to a scene disco than a stadium.

The Whole Catalog as a Dance Floor

An And One club show treats the whole catalog as a dance-floor buffet, jumping eras without much regard for chronology. The most-played songs of their live history are "Techno Man," "Get You Closer," "Für," "Military Fashion Show" and "Sometimes" (setlist.fm), and those anchor the night. The German-language originals ("Für," "So klingt Liebe," "Life Isn't Easy in Germany," "U-Boot-Krieg in Ost-Berlin") are where the home crowd is loudest, and the emotional undertow for long-timers is closer to a survivors' reunion than a spectacle: this is a band that outlasted its labels, its lineups and a five-year silence, and the room knows it.

The current tour makes the covers streak the whole concept. On The Cover Lover Supershow 2, the set is built roughly half from And One originals and half from live covers of the 80s canon. The December 7, 2024 Huxleys Neue Welt show in Berlin ran 27 songs across a main set and encore, of which 14 were covers, closing out with ABBA's "Thank You for the Music" played from tape as the house walk-off (setlist.fm). If you want a pure originals set, know that the standalone club dates lean deliberately into the covers idea described above; the festival slots are where you get the hits-only version.

How It Feels and How It's Paced

Timing-wise, setlist.fm logs an average show length of 2h 8m on this tour, with the band coming on roughly 1h 50m after doors, so a support act plays first and And One take over late in the evening. The verdict from the room is that the covers concept, polarizing on paper, works live precisely because it stops being an And One recital and becomes a communal trip through everyone's shared 80s memory.

Openers

These runs travel with a support act rather than filling the night solo. The 2023 German dates that fed this era were opened by Dortmund synth-pop trio Rroyce, whose singer went down into the crowd to sing and dance mid-set, and the Paris date was opened by Waiting for Words (Reflections of Darkness, 2023). The support acts come from the same scene as the headliner, which is why arriving near doors is genuinely worth it here.

Festival Sets Are a Different Animal

And One are fixtures of the German dark-scene festival circuit (M'era Luna in Hildesheim, Amphi in Cologne, Wave-Gotik-Treffen in Leipzig, E-tropolis in Oberhausen). Those sets are shorter and drop the covers-supershow format for the signatures. The August 10, 2025 M'era Luna set opened "Love Is Always on Your Side," "Krieger," "Military Fashion Show," "Body Nerv" (setlist.fm), a leaner, hits-first version of the show.