Jerry Dammers Spatial AKA Orchestra

01/04/2010

Reclaiming the Ghost Town @ Usher Hall, Edinburgh

Jerry Dammers Spatial AKA Orchestra
Usher Hall, Edinburgh
4/5

There’s a red-eyed Tutankhamun at the back of a crowded stage, a low-flying spaceship ducking under a mirrorball and a quintet of afro and dreadlocked mannequins perfectly poised with keytars aloft the speaker stacks.

As set dressing goes, it’s already spectacular, even before the founder and creative force behind late 1970s winter of discontent era ska revivalists The Specials slinks on sporting a sphinx mask on the back of his head and sets himself in the midst of a mountain of analogue keyboards. As he extracts assorted Dr Phibes style science-fiction squelches seemingly at random from his machinery, the effect is of a retro-future museum cum shrine to some seriously wigged-out deity.

Which is what Jerry Dammers’ rambunctious 19-piece big band homage to the late composer, band-leader, jazz iconoclast and self-styled citizen of Saturn Sun Ra effectively is. Where Dammers’ old band revelled in rude boy nostalgia when The Specials reformed in 2009 without their former driving force, here Dammers has drafted in a plethora of seasoned British jazzers old and Nu to reinvent and reinvigorate old material without ever raining on the still gigging surviving members of Sun Ra’s original Arkestra’s parade.

As Dammers’ entourage process onstage from the foyer and through the auditorium clad in an eye-catchingly golden array of Egyptian robes, head-dresses and masks, a sloping Afro-Beat groove gradually kicks in which, led by vocalists Anthony Joseph and Francine Luce, becomes the simplest of eco-anthems.

Like their inspiration, however, and as the next two and a half hours prove, this Orchestra are anything but earth-bound. Erik Satie’s 1893 piano miniature Gnossienne No 1 is transformed into a brooding skank-a-long. Mike Oldfield’s ‘Tubular Bells’, as used in 1970s horror flick The Exorcist, is invested with similar oomph. Sun Ra’s own material is given an avant- funk bounce by way of both an upright and electric bass complimenting the percussion-friendly vibe.

Dammers’ own back-catalogue is stretched into diffusely unexpected areas, with The Specials soundtrack to 1981’s inner city riots ‘Ghost Town’ now taking on the world as the even more apocalyptic ‘Ghost Planet’, complete with some community gargling. If veteran sax player Larry Stabbins looks as magnificently beatific as he sounds, Mercury nominated pianist Zoe Rahman is positively kittenish as she flits between electric and grand piano from behind a fluffy pink half-mask.

But beyond any accusations of novelty, the glorious blare of the band’s eight-piece horn-and-flute front-line remains woozily faithful to the transcendent intentions of the two Alice Coltrane numbers aired. Nathaniel Facey’s alto stands out, as does Harry Brown’s driving trombone and Robin Hopcraft’s trumpet.

In spirit and numbers, Dammers’ collective recalls, not just Sun Ra’s Arkestra, but big bands closer to home, from pianist Keith Tippett’s Centipede in the 1970s to Django Bates’ 1980s outfit Loose Tubes and the Brechtian cabaret of ‘The Happy End’. As a final, triumphant ‘Space Is The Place’ sees a still in full flight Orchestra led by Rahman through the audience once more to continue outside the venue, the sounds of liberation fills the cold night air with joy.

Neil Cooper