Spiritualised will play their transcendental style of music in an acoustic form

There are few gig experiences more moving than a Spiritualized concert. In main man Jason Pierce's anguished incantations of heartache, faith and addiction, the British space rock behemoths straddle rock, theatre and especially spirituality in shows that are not so much rock performances as cultish gatherings.

Hong Kong will get to see at close quarters the mesmeric hold the band has over an audience when Pierce brings Spiritualized to the city for the first time on August 11.

Like a gaunt, sunglasses-clad high-priest of excess conducting psychedelic powerhouse arrangements that take in gospel, hard rock and blues, Pierce preaches a liturgy of indulgence while seeking salvation from whatever celestial force is willing to absolve him.

That he will be marking Spiritualized's debut here in intimate acoustic form with no more than a few gospel singers as backup holds the prospect of an intense night.

It will come as no surprise that the man who heralded his arrival on the rock scene in the late 1980s with the mantra "taking drugs to make music to take drugs to" is a complicated character for whom the word contradiction seems to have been created. "The slide's always the good bit," he told LA Record in 2008. "The climb back is the laborious bit."

Pierce's many conflicts and personal demons are plain to see in the seven albums the band has released since forming from the embers of drone pioneers Spacemen3 in 1990. His apparent embrace of drug addiction as a creative outlet is undercut by the pain of dependency expressed in songs such as Cop Shoot Cop.