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Sep 29, 2016 Spiritualized By Christopher Roberts Photography by Wendy Lynch Redfern (for Under the Radar)

If you’ve never seen Spiritualized live before then you’re missing out on one of the greatest live bands of the last two decades, especially when Jason Pierce and whoever is in the band at the time is accompanied by a gospel choir and a string section. 2017 sees the 20th anniversary of the band’s finest recorded achievement, their 1997 masterpiece Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space, but Pierce isn’t waiting until next year to celebrate the anniversary. Instead he’s announced a show this November 7 at the Barbican Hall in London where the band plays the album in its entirety, yes, with a string section and gospel choir. British fans are in for a treat and us American fans can only hope Spiritualized also perform the album again in at least New York and Los Angeles, although that’s probably unlikely. Oh, and the reason the band aren’t doing the anniversary show on the actual year of the anniversary? That’s because they have a new album due out in 2017 and they didn’t want it to compete with the anniversary. How exciting!

The band issued a statement about the whole thing on Facebook:

“It’s the 20th anniversary of ‘Ladies and gentlemen…’ next year so we figured we should be playing a celebratory concert to coincide. Fortunately the new album is also due next year… twenty years to the day since ‘Ladies and gentlemen…’ and so as they don’t compete, we decided to run an anniversary show this year and leave some clear space for the new album. I just didn’t wanna pass on the opportunity to perform ‘Ladies and gentlemen…’ live again. It’s such a massive and detailed piece of music to play and is still as demanding and relevant to me as it was on its release. In one 70 minute blast it just about covers everything I still find interesting and engaging in music… from free jazz, doo-wop, and soul to rock & roll, gospel, and the blues… All with heavy guns and the Barbican’s wide screen stage as the backdrop… It’s a real honour to be asked to play it there again.”

Whether that means that the new album will be due out on the exact anniversary of Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space remains to be confirmed. But Ladies and Gentlemen did come out on June 16, 1997 and June 16, 2017 does fall on a Friday.

Below is the Facebook post and the videos for Ladies and Gentlemen singles “Come Together” and “Electricity.” Also, this year is the 15th anniversary of another great Spiritualized album, 2001’s Let It Come Down.

(Via Stereogum)