MOTIVATION RADIO

Although Hillage's Canterbury scene roots are undisputed, this album firmly establishes him as a strong figure of Space Rock. In addition to the heavy sounds of "Light In The Sky", the compositions like "Radio", "Saucer Surfing" and "Octave Doctors" are wonderful space jams in the best GONG tradition of "Radio Gnome Invisible" mythology. Plenty of amazing guitar and synth sounds with a help of his wife Micquette's vocal whispers make Hillage produce this highly accomplished album which I must recommend to all psyche/space lunatics out there....

Steve Hillage is an innovator and one listen to "Motivation Radio" and i am sure you will agree ! In terms of sales I guess this one did not stack up to his first 2 albums, but this album works equally well for me! In fact in many ways this album is my favourite of all his albums. I would say that this is the most accessible of the three for sure and like with all his recordings there is something deeply unique about what he is doing. This album would carry a lot of the songs that he would perform live over the years in and outside of mothership GONG.

This is my least favourite of Hillage's first four albums. About a third of it I don't even like but the rest is excellent.

"Hello Dawn" is a light catchy tune with vocals that ends well with guitar. "Motivation" is similar to the first and to be honest I just can't get into either one. I do like when Steve lights it up late here though. "Light In The Sky" features some aggressive sounding guitar and it's heavier. I hear what sounds like children's voices. It's spacey late with drums. "Radio" is spacey with relaxed guitar melodies. It kicks in with vocals around 4 minutes. "Wait One Moment" is a good one. He slows it down here.

"Saucer Surfing" has some prominant drumming on it that I like. It turns somewhat dreamy 3 minutes in to the end. "Searching For The Spark" features spacey electronics. The tempo picks up before 1 1/2 minutes.Vocals around 3 minutes. "Octave Doctors" sounds great as the sounds seem to echo or pulse. Then the guitar takes over. "Not Fade Away (Glid Forever)" has this beat with guitar. Not a fan of this at all when the vocals arrive.

Certainly "Fish Rising" or even "Green" give me much more pleasure than this one.

While this album has some good moments, on the whole I find it much more commercial than Hillage's previous two albums, Fish Rising and L. The songs in general are much shorter, and less progressive than his earlier work. But there are some listenable pieces on the album. Light In The Sky is a fun, playful song, and the astute listener will hear a nod to captain Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica at the end. Another highlight is Octave Doctors which features a great Hillage guitar solo.

This album might appeal more to the fans of Daevid Allen's Gong than the more technical Pierre Moerlin's group (which I favor). But still, it's not bad.

(By the way, is that a BeeGee on the cover? :) )

Motivation Radio was Steve Hillage's third solo album, and he still hadn't figured out his solo sound. Fish Rising was a Canterbury piece heavily influenced by his concurrent work in Gong, whilst L found Steve upstaged by Utopia; this time around, he was at last free both of Gong and Todd Rundgren and able to make a musical statement without the influence of either of them... and sadly, it seems he had nothing to say at this point. Sounding like a musical blueprint for the likes of Green and Live Herald, Motivation Radio contains all you expect from a Hillage album - glissando guitar, space whispers, New Agey lyrics that tend towards the laughable - but it doesn't assemble the parts into a coherent or interesting whole.

Steve Hillage is a Canterbury scene artist that I've never quite been able to enjoy as much as I hoped - not that that was his concern in the least. His work as a member of Gong, as well as the Gong-like solo debut "Fish Rising", set the bar pretty high for this guitarist. This album, his third solo flight and the first to really feel like a solo album (the prior two were more like supergroup albums), suffers from poor flow, underwritten song material, and thin sound. The difference is immediately apparent as soon as "Hello Dawn" starts. Whereas before Hillage's music was characterized by a huge, spacey sound, this one sounds like a rough bedroom demo by comparison. This would be fine (nothing wrong with a shift in perspective if you're an artist), if the song had anything going for it, which it sadly does not. Just a few chords, an optimistic vocal, and a weak hook. "Motivation" follows, showing glimpses of a dance beat to make a fairly annoying self-help song.

"Light in the Sky" is by far the best song here, with a great set of guitar riffs and a cool cameo vocal by Miquette Girady in the chorus. Great tune! "Radio" sounds good at first, with a long instrumental intro that hearkens back to the prior albums, but in the end it goes nowhere, even after the vocal finally kicks in. "Wait One Moment" returns to the basic 3 minute song format, with an emphasis on "basic": a predictable ballad that sounds ok, but doesn't offer much else for me. Again, basic is not a bad thing, but these songs could at least use some emotion or atmosphere to carry them along. "Saucer Surfing" is a decent enough space rocker, as is the first part of "Searching for the Spark" (the latter being a highlight on "Live Herald", overall a much better version than here). "Octave Doctors" is a ho-hum instrumental that doesn't leave any impression, but the worst is saved for last with "Not Fade Away", the Buddy Holly tune, seemingly "updated" to include the New Age philosophy Steve Hillage was into at the time, using Hillage buzzwords like "glid".

Hillage is a great musician with a very distinctive guitar style, but for this album he appears to go half-heartedly into the world of 3 minute songcraft, de-emphasizing his guitar and emphasizing his lyrics, which I have to say are pretty heavy-handed and don't inspire me much. "Light in the Sky" and "Searching for the Spark" save this one in the end, but overall I consider this a big disappointment.