SPAN's Indian summer series culminated in, as football pundits would say, a game of two halves.
With no support, the Angel Brothers took to the stage for a first half of slow, mellow, ambient western dance grooves, intertwined with intricate acoustic guitaring and traditional Indian patterns.
Percussion heavy, the Angel Brothers' music is a fusion of Indian rhythms, world music and English folk featuring the dhol, dholak, tabla and djembe - kings in the percussion instrument world.
The first set was a performance of complex simplicity, accompanied by appropriate video-imaging of buds opening, leaves unfurling, water cascading, various abstract images and kaleidoscopic patterns, which were perfectly attuned to the seven musicians on stage. Front man Keith Angel, realising that the SPAN gang were here to dance, promised to up the tempo for the second half.
And so, after the interval, Angel Brothers kicked off with some dubbed-out melodica and the crowd slunk and skanked their way onto the dance floor. With the bpms staying at a high rate, the band hit us with Lost In The Loop, a free, semi-improvised piece with hypnotic beats; 'there is a place for psychedelia in the 21st century' said Keith Angel, wisely.
The VJ provided speed-ed-up psychedelic projections hot off his laptop; in fact there is a lot of this appearing in west Wales at the moment, with local experimental collectives ploughing a similar furrow.
We then stepped into the jazz funk arena with Alhambra Samba and caught the gypsy mood with Orient Express as fiddle player Becky came to the fore.
And from there to the band's funky reworking of the Get Carter theme - topical, as this 1971 thriller has been recently hailed as the greatest British movie of all time (discuss). So there you have it - a cacophony of rich cultural connections from the far flung continents of the world, via Barnsley, came together tonight on the Queens Hall stage.
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article