J Spaceman revisits Acoustic Mainlines twenty years on, recasting the Spiritualized and Spacemen 3 songbooks for strings, gospel voices and guitar in the Barbican Hall.
Spiritualized, the band behind Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space, bring Acoustic Mainlines to the Barbican Hall at the Barbican Centre on Saturday 12 December 2026. The stripped-back project returns twenty years after its first performances.
Spiritualized is the band of Jason Pierce, known as J Spaceman. He formed it in Rugby, Warwickshire, in 1990, after the split of Spacemen 3, the drone-rock group he had co-led with Peter Kember.
The debut, Lazer Guided Melodies, arrived in 1992. That album, released in 1997, added gospel choirs, brass and slow-building psychedelia, and a leading music weekly named it album of the year.
In June 1997 the band were the last ever to play Manchester’s Haçienda, and in October they recorded a live album at the Royal Albert Hall. Nine studio albums now stand behind the name, the latest Everything Was Beautiful in 2022.
Acoustic Mainlines began around the making of Songs In A&E, after Pierce survived serious illness in 2005. For the anniversary he is joined by a string quartet, gospel singers and the guitarist Tony Foster. The set draws on both the Spacemen 3 and Spiritualized catalogues.