Gig review: Nick Mason at the Royal Concert Hall

Tonight at the Royal Concert Hall, we get a mixture of fantastically atmospheric music from the Pink Floyd catalogue, mixed with some very interesting – and amusing – tales. Did you know that Nick Mason (the only constant band member from the start to the end of Pink Floyd played his first Nottingham gig at this venue on a bill with the Jimi Hendrix Experience? "I was 7 years old," jokes Nick. 

Or that Spandau Ballet, whose brilliant guitarist Gary Kemp is a focal point for this band, with his excellent lead vocals, guitar and atmospheric effects, celebrated their first number one True at a Nottingham aftershow party at the same venue, but it was hijacked by 70s comic Les Dawson? Neither did I.

Nick plays alongside Lee Harris aka 'The Professor', also a superb lead guitar player, formerly of pub-rock legends The Blockheads. The lineup is finished off by exquisite keyboardist Dom Beken and the charismatic bassist and lead vocalist Guy Pratt, a latter-day Pink Floyd member since the 1980s who has worked with Nick Mason for close to 40 years. Their 'father/enthusiastic son' dynamic on stage is undeniable, and Pratt is highly entertaining, with his quirky Shadows-style dance moves (alongside Harris), windmill arm movements and energetic leaps. Talking of Pratt, we actually thought we'd spotted Hollywood actor Chris Pratt (no relation?) in the audience during the interval (and as he had been in Scotland the previous weekend it isn't a ridiculous thought that it could be him – a night off from promoting Garfield maybe?) But if it isn't him we are happy with our guy.

What a brilliantly collaborative effort it is to make this complex music from different decades come alive again, and the set opens with spirited, exciting versions of Syd-era Pink Floyd songs Astronomy Domine – trippy, mysterious, spacey; Arnold Layne – a playful, surreal howl of rebellion; and See Emily Play – with this band doing justice to one of the best English singles of the late 60s.

And shortly after this triple-threat of pop-psychedelia, a tribute to the genius that was Syd Barrett is expressed both musically and visually on 1965's Remember Me, in which Dom Beken extracts Syd's vocal from the original master tape to enable the band to both sing (with Kemp on backing vocals) and play along live to it. With last year's Now And Then by the Beatles, this shows another positive thing that can be done with AI technology. The song is brief but brilliant.

It all gets more progressive as the show goes on, heading into the pre-Dark Side of the Moon era, where cash registers rang and a million new stereo speakers were sold based on the sounds that most people now see as 'The Floyd' coming to the forefront. Obscured By Clouds was part of the soundtrack of the excellent Barbet Schroeder movie The Valley, and mixed the psychedelic effects of the Barrett era with a new and darker tone, and here the band replicate it very honestly, despite it lacking the rough aggression of the Waters/Gilmour/Mason/Wright version.

When You're In and Remember A Day are sweet renditions that show off The Saucerful of Secrets' subtlety and vocal and musical chops, with the sweetness of the latter moving into the proggy groove that set the blueprint for the likes of prog giants Can all those years ago. Beken's keyboards deserve a special mention here, as Kemp and Harris wig out on their FX, and we get to see Nick Mason's masterfully subtle and powerful drum splashes and stomps in the flesh. The honour is all ours, and what a nice man he seems when he grabs the mic for a fair few minutes and talks to the audience.

Gary Kemp adds a sweet vocal and performance to If, from the Atom Heart Mother album, considered by many fans as a key point of Roger Waters bringing his influence on Pink Floyd heading into the 1970s, and Kemp really does utilise his charisma and likeability here and into the fierceness of the rocking wigout The Nile Song (from the aforementioned Schroeder's More soundtrack). Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun takes us to the interval, and is an epic involving creepy vocals, feedback and Nick Mason's gong. Which he jokingly tells the audience is Roger Waters' on loan.

The start of the second half heads back to Syd with the intro being the mellow, hippy track The Scarecrow, and transitions into a brilliant and FX heavy Fearless, with You'll Never Walk Alone booming through the speakers on the intro and the outro... and amazingly there wasn't a "you Scouse b*****!" chant to be heard from the Nottingham contingent in attendance.

Guy Pratt then does a great vocal rendition on the classic 70s Floyd anti-war song Childhood's End, with some tasteful soloing, before Gary Kemp adds vocal personality to the quirky boogie of Lucifer Sam. Then, for the event's finale and centrepiece, Dom Beken opens up an epic rendition of Echoes with it's iconic 'ping' sounds to finish off this near flawless night of music, with Mason and Pratt's rhythm section taut as sweet harmonies float through the air, replicating the moment where the classic Pink Floyd sound reached it's embryonic, flawless state. 

Harris and Kemp tear up the guitar work as some fantastic visuals form behind the stage. Yes, they are never going to duplicate Dave Gilmour's ferocity and technique, because a genius is a genius, but the band are excellent and the light show and set, with its tasteful oriental look, is almost worth the price of admission alone for this attentive, near-silent and awestruck crowd. As Nick Mason says towards the end of the night, "We cannot do this without you". And the audience rises from its seats for this near-flawless in-house tribute and reflection on some of the greatest rock, blues and psychedelic music ever made.

"The echo of a distant time comes willowing across the sand / And everything is green and submarine and no-one showed us to the land / And no-one knows the where's or why's / But something stirs and something tries and starts to climb towards the light..."