SAN FRANCISCO -- Most bands save their peak experience jams for a

show's final encore, ripping into their guitars and blasting their beats in the

hopes of leaving their audience with a final explosive memory.

Then again, Spiritualized is clearly not most bands.

Just three minutes into their hour-and-a-half show at San Francisco's Fillmore

on Tuesday, the group, led by ex-Spacemen 3 musical astronaut Jason Pierce,

kicked out the jams in the most furious way possible.

After taking the stage to some atmospheric Velvet Underground-like droning,

the six-piece band blew the audience away from a standing start with a blast

furnace wall of acid guitar and saxophone noise. Assaulting the unsuspecting

capacity crowd with horizon-scanning blue and white search lights and a

shape-shifting psychedelic backdrop, the group grinded away in a cacophonic

swirl for close to 15 minutes.

The atypical opening offered the kind of energy-draining finale most bands

would have waited an hour or more to unveil. And fans were suddenly

transported to the sweaty delirium that comes with rolling with a band

throughout their set.

But the night had just begun. And the rocketship that is Spiritualized was just

getting off the ground.

Not letting up for even a moment, the band segued directly into "Shine a Light"

from 1992's Lazer Guided Melodies, which expanded and contracted

like one of Pink Floyd's early '70s multi-part headtrips, ebbing and flowing from

lush sonic pastoral themes back to amped rock chords within the space of

several minutes.

As the crowd literally shook with anticipation, Pure Phase's "Electric

Mainline" emerged from the swell amid brightly-colored rainbow lights and a

stun-gun, dual-guitar barrage of stoned-Detroit-punk-meets-electrified-Miles

Davis guitar and sax.

With the first half of the set's seamless shifts from song to song, including a suite

that featured three tunes sequenced just as they are on the band's latest album,

Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space, "Electricity," "Home of

the Brave" and the spooky X-Files harmonica soloing "The Individual,"

Spiritualized seemed now to be reaching for the same spirit of jam-happy aural

wonderment experienced in the Fillmore of old.

Conjuring the same spirit of the late '60s peace-and-love era of the Fillmore's

early days, when the noise parades of Jimi Hendrix and the eye-candy light

shows of the Headlights visual crew filled the hall, Spiritualized updated those

now-quaint traditions with their own technology-assisted multi-media onslaught.

As much a trip for your head as your ears, the show repeatedly pushed, pulled

and pummeled you with torrents of white noise sound and trippy, flashing

visions, whether it was the funeral drone of "Medication" or the narcotic

windowpane rhythm and blooze saxophone jam of "Come Together."

After a series of mid-show peaks, the more traditional show-ending fury rained

down for more than 10 minutes during Ladies and Gentlemen's closing

track, "Cop Shoot Cop..."

Built like a 20-ton passenger airplane taking off, the song taxied off the runway

at a slow-burn pace, with a gentle roll of echoing guitar riffs, suddenly hitting

supersonic speed in a flash of lights and thundering free jazz guitar and

saxophone riffs, all furiously competing for limited aural space.

Satisfied that they'd given the audience a stupefying cycle of musical tablets to

swallow, the band exited without a word or an encore.

Actually, they had already played their encore -- as an opener.

[Fri., Nov. 14, 1997, 9 a.m. PDT]