CONNAN MOCKASIN

Shepherd’s Bush, London | 28 January

It was but a few minutes into the show before the gorgeous, beading bass slides of Faking Jazz Together presaged a most handsome truth; Connan Mockasin’s landmark Shepherd’s Bush show was going to be one of only pure, exquisite, passionate, intergalactic musical love-making.

And it was as divine and intersexual an interaction as it could be, beamed by a frontman whose genderless vocals spoke only of alien love in a futuristic world. Cyber guitar wails parried paradoxical humans and their peculiar Tamagotchi expressions as a phantasmagoria of colour swept a dense and squealing audience. If it were not for the occasional wet licks of Pink Floyd, or the falsetto hooks of mirrored-Michael Jackson, then Crack might have questioned whether Connan was from this Earth at all.

Generous helpings from his fantastic debut LP complimented the cream of the recent, Caramel – which was well and truly squirted with the mass sing-a-long of I’m The Man That Will Find You. It’s Choade My Dear from the former, too, was met with some truly amorous eruptions.

But it was the truly emphatic encore that crowned this sensational evening. A slipping, soaring medley that transcended a spectrum of volume and tempo cast the crowd into blissful silence; a marvel of the most grandiose and entrancing musicianship: 20 full minutes of Forever Dolphin Love.

In those three words the mesmerising experience is ultimately defined.

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Words: James Balmont

Photo: Carolina Faruolo