This was a match made in dystopian heaven – if that's not too much of a contradiction in terms.

Fritz Lang's seminal science-fiction film, released in 1927, was given new life via a scintillating – and surprisingly emotional – soundtrack from electronic London-based duo Factory Floor.

As the band's name suggests, FF have a preoccupation with the semantic field of industry; they revel in the painstaking craft of their lean, minimalist beats and the first song of their most recent album 25:25, Meet Me At the End, features just one lyric; "work".

Their soundtrack for Metropolis was first heard at the Science Museum, a fitting environment for a film so concerned with the future of urban society and infrastructure (as it was imagined in the 1920s).

The Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts proved another suitable location. The sound quality of the auditorium is impeccable, and here it allowed Factory Floor's carefully crafted soundscape to flourish. Scoring a silent film is a delicate business – one tonal misstep and the atmosphere of the movie is compromised – but Factory Floor pulled it off with aplomb.

Their inclination towards repetition enabled a slow build of tension as Metropolis's uneven society was teased out; the poor workers feed the industrial machine that powers the city while the privileged dwell in high-rise towers. Factory Floor delivered a sense of underlying dread at the core of a community that is so divided – inevitably, trouble is not far away.

Pleasingly, though, they also worked genuine emotion into their driving beats as Freder and Maria, two people on opposite sides of the social spectrum, attempt to bridge the wealth gap. The soundtrack approached ecstasy as the film reached its tumultuous climax, the metropolis itself bearing the strain of the class struggle played out on its streets.

Factory Floor used a basic five-note riff to ramp up the intensity. They continued in this vein for over 30 minutes, the hypnotic groove bedding itself into the audience's skulls.

The only criticism can be that the film's subtitles were not translated into English, meaning certain plot devices were lost on first-time viewers. Nonetheless, this was an audio-visual treat that married a pioneering filmmaking mind with one of today's most thrillingly forward-thinking bands.