You’ve never seen a drumkit like the one being played by Tony Allen. The reason for that is simple enough. It didn’t exist before Tony – Afrobeat icon, perhaps best known for his work with Fela Kuti – had it specially made in Ghana. Each drum is carved from the same tree. Allen’s name is sculpted on the toms. It looks like an ancient Africa forbear to a Western drummer’s kit. “Have you seen the hi-hat?” enthuses Damon. “Have you ever seen a hi-hat like that before?”

We can answer that question on your behalf. No, you’ve never seen a hi-hat like that before. Tony’s left foot pulls down what looks to be a modified billiard ball onto a wooden block. With the exception of Tony and kora player Madou Diabate, the rest of the group is “your standard 16th century combo.” You might think you’ve never heard a crumhorn player before, but you almost certainly have. It’s the most recognizably Elizabethan-sounding of instruments. High and emphatic, like an asthmatic piccolo.

And stood up, staring at the ensemble as their eyes oscillate between the sheet music and his fierce gaze is Damon Albarn. Plaintive strummed chords herald the beginning of a piece referred to on the plot synopsis as Apple Cart. An autumnal reverie is abrubtly broken by a brisk alarm call from a renaissance horn section. One or two eyebrows may have been raised when news emerged that Tony was to be part of this most quintessentially English of sagas. But he’s just as central to the mood of this music as he was to the dubwise Dickensian jazz of The Good, The Bad & The Queen. The story of Doctor Dee is one, in part, of divination. A reminder that the gulf between mathematics and magic opened up relatively recently. In some parts of the world, that gulf doesn’t exist at all.

In fact, when the band finally play the song all the way through, you realise that, even in our corner of the world, art is the one place where that gulf can also disappear in an instant.

WALSINGHAM