Wed 16 Dec – Spiritualized
Contrary to what most people seem to be saying, I found this slightly disappointing. What I love about Spiritualized, and Spacemen 3 too, is the way their music achieves ecstatic states through accumulating repetition. Wednesday's performance had too many extraneous elements to really create the transcedence that Spiritualized at their best achieve. The gospel choir wasn't the problem—that element has both the ritual aspects and the appeal to spirituality that telegraphs and contributes to the aim of transcendence. But the strings and especially brass, punctuating the music at points of emphasis and thereby breaking the illusion of a continuous flow, I found only diminished the effect. I'm not saying I didn't enjoy it, because I certainly did. But the clutter in the music, and the distancing effect of a seated concert, got in the way, for me, of a fully realised performance.
Contrary to what most people seem to be saying, I found this slightly disappointing. What I love about Spiritualized, and Spacemen 3 too, is the way their music achieves ecstatic states through accumulating repetition. Wednesday's performance had too many extraneous elements to really create the transcedence that Spiritualized at their best achieve. The gospel choir wasn't the problem—that element has both the ritual aspects and the appeal to spirituality that telegraphs and contributes to the aim of transcendence. But the strings and especially brass, punctuating the music at points of emphasis and thereby breaking the illusion of a continuous flow, I found only diminished the effect. I'm not saying I didn't enjoy it, because I certainly did. But the clutter in the music, and the distancing effect of a seated concert, got in the way, for me, of a fully realised performance.
