NICK MASON’S SAUCERFUL OF SECRETS

Let there be more light! Seriously, more light please! Saucerful Of Secrets have just kicked into their second number, Pink Floyd’s debut single, Arnold Layne, following their now expected opener Astronomy Domine, which has been a blaze of multicoloured lights and liquid movies on a huge two-storey backdrop, and now they’re plunged into darkness. At first no one, audience or band, seems too sure if this is actually part of the show, but as the song progresses the sense that something might be awry sinks in and we start wondering if the band might even quit the stage. Then, flash… let there be more light, indeed. And so, summoning their cosmic powers, Nick Mason and his Saucerful Of Secrets let their psychic emanations flow.

The flying Saucer(ful)s loom through the gloom.

“Without Nick Mason, we may not have been able to enjoy these previously overlooked gems in the live arena again. And what gems they truly are.”

It’s been six years since Mason unveiled this project at Dingwalls in Camden one very warm May evening. Back then they actually played Let There Be More Light, but half that early set remains in situ and the band have evolved into a well-drilled quintet. At the time there was a certain level of, shall we say, curiosity that the group involved no one –beyond Mason and bassist Guy Pratt –recognisable to a prog audience. Today, despite a CV that includes Spandau Ballet, The Orb and Ian Dury And The Blockheads, it seems generally accepted that Gary Kemp, Dom Beken and Lee Harris really know their Floyd chops.

Behind them sits the ‘engine room’, Nick Mason. His rhythmic drum sound and unfussy style always seemed better suited to the pre-arena-era Floyd music, something proved by his re-emergence into the spotlight with Saucerful. At 80 he cuts the figure of a man several decades younger; his between-song banter is avuncular and often hilarious, not least when he pokes fun at his surviving Floyd cohorts, especially Roger Waters in a mock phone call mid-set.

The voice of Syd Barrett is heard on Remember Me, from an early Floyd demo session that’s a new addition to this year’s set. It follows a jaunty See Emily Play, and ends the connection with Floyd’s former leader in this half of the set as the band stretch into Obscured By Clouds and When You’re In.

Guy Pratt keeps an eye on the crowd.

Remember A Day gives everyone a chance to remember the late Richard Wright in the venue where he famously played the organ back in 1969, a moment memorably captured on Pink Floyd’s 2014 farewell album The Endless River. The excitement builds as they run through their adaptation of Atom Heart Mother, bookended by If, the pounding metal of The Nile Song and the first half climaxes with a pulsating Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun.

It’s interesting to note the crowd, all standing (not to mention dancing) on the floor section of the venue, are not the ‘men of a certain age’ fest that populated those early Saucerful shows, but now display a wide range of ages and a far more balanced gender split. The younger ones clearly know their Floyd apples and oranges, too, whether it’s dancing along to the psychedelic frippery of The Scarecrow or Lucifer Sam, or grooving more intently to Childhood’s End and Fearless.

Medallion man: Lee Harris.

Saucy licks from Guy Pratt and Gary Kemp.

TINA KORHONEN

A solitary ‘ping’ emanating from the stage sends the packed Royal Albert Hall into raptures, for it can only mean one thing. The majestic, towering Echoes, probably the first major epic from the band that nodded towards the arenas they would fill for the remainder of their career, and the end of the more experimental wonderment of their initial musical phase. Fittingly, for a band that concentrates on those earlier years, Echoes is the final song of the main set, and neither the song nor the performance disappoints, everyone singing along to ‘Overhead the albatross/Hangs motionless upon the air…’ as the song twists and turns, eventually its central driving riff giving way to the closing mellow vibe that also opened the song, and delighted cheers from the crowd.

Ebullient encores One Of These Days and A Saucerful Of Secrets itself bring a wonderful evening to a close, leaving us with the feeling that without Nick Mason, we may not have been able to enjoy these previously overlooked gems in the live arena again. And what gems they truly are.

Will we ever see the band again? Who knows? I hope so; I’m forever holding out hope that we might one day hear Free Four or The Gold It’s In The…, or even Wot’s… Uh The Deal in the live arena. But if not, it’s still been one hell of a trip.

JERRY EWING

Psychedelia fully underway.

The mothership’s maestro, Nick Mason.

TOOL

“Let’s go for a fucking trip!” commands Tool frontman Maynard James Keenan. Like a sitter guiding a budding psychonaut through their initiatory travels, he sternly unloads a list of regulations for the evening.

“Stay connected, stay together, stay present” and in now customary fashion, absolutely “no mobile phones”, the latter order arriving with a sharp-edged semirant about technology addiction.

Domineering though Keenan may be, what he delivers is a meticulous, no-nonsense event. Simply titled ‘Tool In Concert’, the floor of London’s O2 is even packed out with chairs, restricting fans from excessive movement but directing their view forward to the vast stage screen. And as Tool begin their ascent with set opener Jambi, the monitor lights up with a series of hypnotic kaleidoscopes that later transition into absorbing and often disturbing visuals, including nightmarish hellscapes, pulsating fleshy forms, probing aliens and sparkling solar flares.

Adding to the visual splendour is the extravagant light show: lasers dart across the ceiling under multicoloured beams, smoke swirls in mesmeric plumes and, as they play Intolerance, a lighting rig is lowered over the stage, evoking the shape of a UFO. Meanwhile, Tool’s trademark heptagram hovers above, a fitting symbol sometimes interpreted as a bridge or realm between worlds.