Ladies and gentlemen we are floating in space

Jason Pierce began working on Ladies and gentlemen we are floating in space during the summer of 1995 and, as it began to take shape, he realised he was making his masterpiece. As Spiritualized leader since 1990, and co-founder of experimental drone-rockers Spacemen 3 before that, Pierce had always heard the sound in his head without fully ever managing to transpose it onto record. On Spiritualized’s third album, he majestically cracked it. Mixing careening rock ’n’ roll, sumptuous strings, orchestral minimalism, gospel, free jazz and more, Ladies and gentlemen… would come to define him. Of course, the lush, panoramic sonic world that Ladies and gentlemen… inhabits is only the half of it. What gives the record its gripping emotional anchor—one that could reach down into the Mariana Trench—is the sound of Pierce trying to make sense of everything in the wake of a breakup. It’s no coincidence that the first voice you hear on Ladies and gentlemen… is that of keyboardist Kate Radley, intoning the title of the album over a crackled phone line. Radley and Pierce, a couple since the late ’80s, had broken up sometime in 1995 and, later that year, Radleysecretly married The Verve’s Richard Ashcroft. Pierce was bereft. He has since claimed that devastating ballad “Broken Heart”, the album’s standout moment, was written before the breakup. Even if that is true, you can’t help but hear it through that prism, all raw vulnerability and poignant contemplation. What is clear is that Pierce threw himself into the work (“Though I have a broken heart/I’m too busy to be heartbroken,” he sings on that track). Incessant touring had turned the band around him—guitarist John Coxon, bassist Sean Cook, drummer Damon Reece and Radley—into a formidable live force and their potency is captured on amped-up cuts such as “Electricity” and “Come Together”. But Pierce needed to go further afield to bring the full vision to life, recording strings with the Balanescu Quartet in London, visiting Dr.