A robed figure wanders across the Usher Hall stage, surrounded by cosmic paraphernalia and alien effigies, towards a grand bank of keyboards which could easily double as flight cockpit for an interstellar journey. The figure, mysterious and hooded, sparks up a generating organ hum, his fingers slamming across the key controls. The sound of musical engines revving up, building up to a potential take-off, a moment signalled when a bespectacled rapper wanders onstage and intones, “It’s BEYOND the end of the world!”, over and over and over again.
With this signal, the troupe of musicians parade through the Usher Hall stalls, past excited and bemused faces, and onto the stage to take their positions. Bedecked in shiny, ornate costumes and eighteen strong, it truly feels like they’re going to take us to Saturn.
The special guest rapper is poet Anthony Joseph and the robed apparition is Jerry Dammers AKA The Original Special, the one who doesn’t do reunions. Originally created as a touring tribute to the legend of Sun Ra, cosmic jazz bandleader extraordinaire, Dammers’ Spatial AKA Orchestra is now a colossal live manifestation of the more exotic realms of 20th century music. An ethno-dub jazz excursion into Dammers’ influences along with the odd (very odd) nod to his own back catalogue.
The extraordinary two and a half hour performance which follows takes in Erik Satie, the lounge-pop exotica of Martin Denny, Mike Oldfield’s “Theme From The Exorcist” and a Sun Ra arranged version of the sixties Batman theme entitled “We’re Going To Unmask The Batman”. Fans of cosmic, avant-garde jazz are more than rewarded with blasts through the more cacophonic elements of Sun Ra’s musical history, along with a mesmerisingly bracing take on Alice Coltrane’s “Journey In Satchidananda” and Sun Ra’s protest song “Nuclear War” spliced with The Specials’ own “Man At C&A”.
Fans of Dammers’ previous work get a few other titbits, including “Intergalactic Jetset” and a community gargling version of “Ghost Town”. The latter perfectly displays the tone of the evening. Everything is there to be twisted into new, perfectly askew, shapes. There is nothing staid or overly reverent about the Orchestra. Dammers makes an ebullient and warm host, his “gor-blimey” song introductions marvellously juxtaposing with the incredible visage of his performers.
What performers they are. A seven-piece horn section, including Denys Baptiste on sax and Harry Brown on trombone, vie together with three percussionists and various guitars, flutes and electric pianos, all in perfect symmetry with each other. It’s the greatest big band from outer space you could ever hear, now that Sun Ra himself has returned to his home world of Saturn (although he does appear in mystical form on the large screen behind the orchestra).
Vocals are provided intermittently by Francine Luce’s keening twitter, as well as Anthony Joseph returning to recite his own thesis on the African origin of UFOs. Finally, after the most marvellous of evenings, there is only one way it can end. The extended space jam of “The Soul Vibrations of Man” segues into Sun Ra’s mantra of “Space Is The Place” as the orchestra leave the stage and once again parade through the now wildly enthusiastic audience.
Dammers is left alone up there, crashing the controls to the very end, before rushing from the stage. On leaving the Usher Hall, into the cold March night, we see where he has gone. The orchestra have moved outside, still blowing out “Space Is The Place”, right next to a building site. Dammers smiles broadly and wanders through straggling audience members, all chanting and singing in glorious conversion. He most certainly doesn’t look like he wishes he was back in Wolverhampton Civic Hall bashing out “Too Much, Too Young”.