IT’S been a long time between Love & Hate making number one in July last year and Michael Kiwanuka promoting the chart topper on his autumn tour in 2017, but the wait for a York show was worth it.

The British Ugandan Londoner arrived in the city the day before Friday’s sold-it show, a relaxing way to prepare for his Barbican bow. By the time it took place, there were two tour buses and one lorry stocked with equipment parked on the forecourt, and you sensed this was to be a seriously big-scale show for a blossoming artist fully expected to rise still higher.

More often you associate such professionalism with American acts, but Kiwanuka’s show was a magnificent home-grown triumph for a charming, proper soul man, retro yet modern, his songs feeling like they have been here forever, or at least since the days of Otis Redding, Marvin Gaye and Gil Scott-Heron, with his African roots coming through too.

Guitarist Kiwanuka took to the stage with two saxophonists, a bassist, keyboard player, drummer, percussionist, lead guitarist and three backing singers, the drums and percussion positioned to the front to appreciate their brilliant skills all the more.

From the off, the sound mix was perfect for all to shine as Kiwanuka played all but one of Love & Hate’s ten songs, three from 2012’s Home Again, and a gorgeous new number, Stars, that recalled Kiwanuka once giving up the guitar only to reach for it again and in turn reach for the stars too.

Songs often were presented in extended versions, hence only 13 in two sublime hours, but this showed off the musicianship to the max, and from Falling to Black Man In A White World, Home Again to Love & Hate, Kiwanuka was a rising talent supreme.