Gig review: HENGE at Holmfirth Picturedrome

If the tune is any way autobiographical, the rich creative potential that can be a byproduct of an ability to control the course of dreams could help explain the mindboggling spectacle that unfurls tonight inside the grand confines of the Picturedrome.

If the band is to be believed, the guitarist and singer fronting Henge isn’t actually Whittaker at all. It is Zpor, one of four aliens from disparate corners of the solar system who landed on Earth and decided to form a musical group to aid their survival on our planet. Judging by tonight’s evidence, these suspiciously human-shaped extraterrestrials are succeeding handsomely in their mission.

For the non-initiated, the show can initially feel like stepping inside the strange ritual of a cosmic cult you haven’t been invited to.

The Manchester-based quartet aren’t the first act to suggest they originate from a different corner of the cosmos. They may be the first whose music doesn’t sound entirely human-made either. Combining squelchy synth emissions and liberal sprinklings of the vocoder with the unwieldiness of the more playful offshoots of prog and psychedelia (Gong seems an apt reference point, alongside the irreverent giddiness of Primus) and rhythms that venture nearer to oompah than a rock n roll backbeat, the music can feel too slippery and stretchy to get a hold of. Yet their colourfully dressed converts (who span every age from teenagers to late middle age) greet every tune like an old favourite, dancing along in the unorthodox manner of Deadheads swirling around at archival footage of Grateful Dead shows.

Add this to the band’s wacky visual presentation (two of band members are kitted out as trashy sci-fi horror story archetypes of grotesque extraterrestrial beings, whilst Whittaker/Zpor sports an ample cape and wand topped up with an outsized light bulb), and more serious-minded music enthusiast will sense the unappetising whiff of an insincere comedy act. As the set progresses, and tracks like the spaghetti western-infused New Planet ease off the hyperactivity to allow the music more room to breathe, Henge gradually prove to be a near-perfectly calibrated blend of eccentric theatrics, wacky sense of the absurd and musical ambition, who somehow manage to render their uncompromisingly odd concept into a joyously positive, good-humoured gathering of likeminded humans (and aliens) via some strange cosmic alchemy.

The performance is also capable of evoking unexpected poignancy. Albeit dressed up as a bouncy party anthem, the set-closing Demilitarise provides a powerful plea for the diversion of human resources from destruction to cooperative exploration, bringing to mind Sun Ra’s seminal anti-war chant Nuclear War, had The Arkestra ever felt the drive to venture into rhythmic hybrids of ska and oompah.