HAWKWIND

This new effort from Hawkwind is lush and beautiful. Very melodic and song based but with the typical space vibe. I feel similarities between this and the latest Agusa and Ozric Tentacles efforts. The new kids in Tangerine Dream did something similar with Edgar's music on the Quantum Gate and Raum efforts. The same here - recognizable but more polished and produced. Masterfully put together in the studio, dreamy and smooth but with some of the typical heavy driving bass. I enjoy their 70s stuff but that seems downright low fi and garag-like compared to this as far as production goes. Color me impressed. This is really smooth almost ambient at times yet clearly guitar driven space rock. Easily 4 stars. An excellent addition to any proghead collection for sure. No bad songs or filler at all and decent vocals too.

This is another compilation of tracks from the 2007 Live at the London Astoria concert that appears on Knights OF Space, Knights IN Space, and Live at the London Astoria on the streaming services. It is not found on the Cherry Red website, and a search shows it is on the Black Barn Music label. It can be downloaded from an obscure website, so I assume it is a bootleg, although the sound quality is pretty good. How should this album be rated? The performance and sound is the same as on the other authorized releases, and ordinarily as a Hawkwind fan I would rate it 4 stars. I see that two others gave it one star and another two stars, But due to its questionable provenance, I would recommend avoiding it in favor of Knights in Space, so one star from me.

As a longtime Hawkwind fan, I enjoyed this very much. It is more of a sophisticated chill out session than a rocker, and more in line with "It is the Business of the Future to Be Dangerous" (as Warthur also observes) and the Hawkwind Light Orchestra albums. Certainly quite spacey, beautifully recorded and played, with Dave Brock's jaunty perspective on things in his wise old age running through. If you want a good Hawkwind heavy duty space rock workout, their latest live album, "We Are Looking In On You" (2022) is the perfect complement. Also, I want to recommend the Hawklords albums from the last 11 years, which I hope Progarchives will someday admit to the sacred canon.

Hawkwind's extensive live catalogue is a blessing and a curse - a blessing in the sense that there's lot to explore, and a curse in the sense that there's some real stinkers foisted off on the paying public in there.

The Dreamworkers of Time boxed set, however, is a solid release, as expected from the Atomhenge label, Esoteric/Cherry Red's home for Hawkwind material - the band and the Atomhenge crew perhaps realising that careful custodianship and curation of the archives is what's called for. It's a collection of various recordings the band made for BBC radio between 1985 and 1995, which means that it's not only a good companion piece to the At The BBC release (which hails from the early 1970s) but also has a decent sound quality.

The first disc presents a 1986 appearance at the Reading Festival that was previously released as the Friday Rock Show Sessions disc - the version here has all the material on that, with a sufficiently careful sprucing-up as to render that disc redundant. The other two discs, however, represent rarer material. There's a 1988 show from the Xenon Codex era that's pretty solid, and then the third disc rounds off the collection with two live-in-the-studio sets, one from 1985 and one from 1995 - this one having a different line-up from the rest of the set, from the incarnation of Hawkwind who would give us Alien 4.

None of the material here will make you radically rethink your opinion on Hawkwind's work in this era, but if you enjoyed the sound of The Xenon Codex you'll find a lot to like here.

As the title implies, this is a compilation of the albums - live and studio - which Hawkwind put out in the small Emergency Broadcast label in the mid-1990s. This is not one of Hawkwind's more widely-celebrated eras, and the two studio albums here - Alien 4 and Distant Horizons - perhaps illustrate why; Alien 4 is the somewhat stronger one of the two, but both feel unfocused, and not in the sense of a pleasant space rock gaze but in the sense of not quite coming together to the extent they could.

So what's with the favourable rating? Well, it turns out that those two albums tell only half the story. The rest comes in the form of two live releases - The Business Trip from the tour for It Is the Business of the Future To Be Dangerous and Love In Space from the Alien 4 tour. Hawkwind live albums aren't exactly thin on the ground, but those two are especially good, taking the material from their respective albums (plus more besides) and really showcasing them well.

In fact, I would say these two live albums, which showcase Hawkwind as a sort of space rock/new age mashup trio, perhaps represent the best place to start when exploring this box, since they do a far better job of bringing the listener around to what the band were doing sonically speaking at this point in time than the studio albums do. Consider this a modestly-priced way of getting two absolute classic five star live albums, and treat the studio albums as interesting bonuses, and you will perhaps get the best out of this.

As I look through the ratings on this album, the follow up to the fantastic 5 Star "Hall Of The Mountain Grill", I am glad to see that there are more 5 Star ratings on this than anything else which is rare and should be. A 5 belongs to only the albums that are truly good throughout. Out of the 54 albums I have done reviews on only 5 are one is have pegged as 5 star. Only albums that are rock solid in all areas get that ranking and this one is one of them. I have never given a 5 Star rating on more than one album by a group and this will be number 2 for Hawkwind.

I my opinion, the best of the band is contained in this and the above mentioned "Hall" and they are back to back in the chronology. On "Hall" they added a few new players and instruments and they were a huge addition to their sound in a very good way. The bands other albums I can find a few songs or a handful I may think are good but this one is great throughout. They reach their spatial peak if you will.

"Assault & Battery" starts off the album with the soaring mellotron and a flute compliments the sound well. "The Golden Void" is an extension of the first track as they flow well together. Other than King Crimson I really am not that fond of horns on a prog band but they are definitely part of the band's sound and they work well. "The Wizard?" brings back the poetry which I can take or leave but it works well as it flows into the instrumental "Opa Loka" which is pure Hawkwind. It then flows into one of my all time favorite Hawk songs "The Demented Man." What is weird is I have no idea why I like this song so much. It has an acoustic guitar and voice but the sonic synth atmosphere is where I am mesmerized by it. It sounds emotionally tragic. The song just reaches into me and pulls me into its emotional pit.

The next few songs are good including another poetry rendition. The next song that really amps it up is "Spiral Galaxy 28948" and the sonic soaring synths and drumming are really good in this one as another great instrumental. It rolls into "Warriors" another poetry journey. Again I am not all that fond of the poetry segments but they are part of who the band are and they do them well. "Sonic Attack" is of course their signature poetry session and it is great! "Dying Seas" oddly sounds a lot lie a pop tune from the early 60's to start with but then it comes into its own instrumentally. The band is the best jamming band I have ever heard. "Kings Of Speed" is an all out rocker without anything spacey about it. "Motorhead" ends the album and it is a lot like a 1950's rocker including the fact that it is basically a song done in mono with very little stereo. The end gets a bit spacey.

In all, this album spells out who Hawkwind are. A big High 5 Star.

Hawkwind??. Now here is a band that changed hands more than the players changed their shorts. It was a revolving door and there were only a few players that stayed common, especially Dave Brock. I first started listening to this band in the late 70's when I graduated from high school back in my Haze Dayz, ifyouknowhatimean. I heard parts of the first 3 albums and they had their moments of greatness. Hawkwind is like early Floyd on steroids. Space, the final frontier is their place of residence. This band is meant to be heard on a good stereo or back then quad system while you are just sitting and hanging out in your mental 'nothing box' (that's when you really are not thinking about anything at all; guys know this better than women!).

When I heard this album, it defined who the band is at their best. It is my all time favorite by the band and the next album, "Warrior On The Edge Of Time" is number 2. On this album, there is not a weak track at all. From start to finish it is a wonderful journey into prog fantasy. "Psychedelic Warlords" is a great start with a fast beat. This band knows how to use a mellotron to its fullest and on this record it soars. "Winds Of Change" is a great little instrumental almost like a ballad with an organ, mellotron and violin. It conjures up emotions which is the essence of prog and is what lured me to this genre as my favorite type of music. The entire record is an emotional journey. "D Rider" is a space fest with the pulsing synths. I love the first half of "Web Weavers" as it surrounds you when you drop on a pair of good headphones.

"You'd better Believe It" is pure space music when it starts with the violin. I had never heard anyone do that with that instrument before. I remember sitting in my car a bit zoned out on top of a view of downtown Spokane Washington at night and listened to that intro over and over. That being said, a true measure of good prog music is that you do not need to have mind altering substances to truly enjoy it and since I have not been there in that zone since I was in my early 20's and I love this record to this day I would have to say it stands the test of time and substance! The title track has nothing to do with grills or halls but it is a good little instrumental track and would be the only spot on the album that is less than thrilling. "Lost Johnny" is a good tune that prods along; it is in ways a change of scenery on the album. "Goat Willow" like the title track is just a little instrumental jam. The finale "Paradox" is a great song with the vocals far off in the left and right channels and not in the center and the mellotron is in its usual place and strong. It turns into an emotional soaring instrumental and in the end it quiets down and makes a gentle exit.

If you are new to Hawkwind, this is the best place to start but be warned: If you start here, everything else will be second best with this band. IMHO. It does not have any of the poetry reading but I was never much for that anyway.... Except in the case of "Sonic Attack." I give it a RARE full high 5.

Although their most seminal period was around the heady days of Space Ritual, Hawkwind's late-1970s work also deserves attention, and Days of the Underground offers a deluxe look at this period in the band's history. For one thing, it comes with three freshly-baked Steven Wilson mixes of their 1977-1978 studio albums - Quark, Strangeness and Charm, PXR5, and 25 Years On (released under the Hawklords moniker), all of which present significant sonic improvements over previous CD issues and really refresh the material while remaining true to the original spirit of the releases. Blu-ray offerings of these mixes in 5.1 surround sound are also presented.

As well as those three albums we get a disc of studio sessions from Rockfield Studios from January 1977, which captures the band working out much of the material which would form Quark, Strangeness & Charm. You get early versions of most of the songs there - a bit trippier, looser, and more jam-like than the more polished takes on the album, and so perhaps to some tastes better - as well as a clutch of improvisations.

A brace of live shows from September 1977 showcase how the band sounded promoting Quark, Strangeness & Charm (and test-driving material which would make it onto PXR5) on the road. The best of these is probably the Leicester show, but all of the live extracts here show the band taking an approach which blends their classic style with just a touch of manic punk energy. Of all the psych-space-prog groups of the early 1970s, Hawkwind's DIY approach and political forthrightness perhaps left them best-placed to be adopted by the punk era, and these live shows demonstrate why.

The legendary "Sonic Assassins" gig from December 1977 is also included here - a one-off gig which experimented with folding some members of local Devon band Ark into the Hawkwind line-up. Subsequent lineup changes would lead to some of the Ark lads becoming members of Hawkwind more full-time; in particular, Harvey Bainbridge would be a lynchpin of Hawkwind's 1980s sound. Whilst Robert Calvert had to be gently coaxed into performing the gig - he was concerned about the lack of rehearsals - the injection of new blood into Hawkwind here gives things a new dynamic, with the keyboards in particular taking a significant step forwards.

Last up is the Brunel University live recording originally released as Live '78, an excellent release capturing the Hawklords-era band in fine form, both in CD form and with some extracts presented in video form on the supplementary Blu-Rays.

This is the sort of Hawkwind set we need more of. A lot of the live and unreleased studio material has been released before, sure, but aside from the Live '78 show a lot of it has been in the form of a few tracks here and a few tracks there on a disparate range of sometimes quite hit-and-miss compilations and EPs. By contrast, this is a one-stop shop which will give you not only all three albums from this period of the band, but a generous helping of live shows at that. I sincerely hope they intend to do more of these, at least for those periods where Atomhenge have the rights to the relevant albums; a collection covering the period of Warrior On the Edge of Time and Astounding Sounds, Amazing Music would be grand, as would a set spanning 1979 to the early 1980s or one doing a deep dive on the Chronicle of the Black Sword period.

The latest Hawkwind studio album (at the time of writing) finds them leaning even further into soundscapes and away from conventional songs than the preceding Somnia. With the lineup expanded since then, with the prolific Thighpaulsandra providing an extra level of electronic texture, things seem somewhat richer than the preceding album, but the same general musical approach is underway, more in line with It Is the Business of the Future To Be Dangerous than, say, Warrior On the Edge of Time or Quark, Strangeness and Charm. If you like Hawkwind when they delve into abstract electronic realms and don't worry too much about offering something which resembles a song, you'll likely enjoy this.

Hawkwind's 2021 studio album feels like a somewhat better-mixed and more intricate take on the 2020 Hawkwind Light Orchestra album, Carnivorous - with a bigger lean towards electronic soundscapes and somewhat away from traditional songs. The sonic similarity may arise from the fact that Hawkwind did this as a trio, plus a couple of backing singers, much as they had on that release, so I suppose the distinction between Hawkwind and the Light Orchestra has vanished at this point, at least as far as studio projects go. (I guess when you can layer stuff this much, a "stripped down" lineup merely means there's less people to divide the work around.)

On the whole, it feels like something of a resurgence of the direction taken on It Is the Business of the Future To Be Dangerous, another album recorded by a trimmed-down studio lineup - and that's fine by me, because that was a pretty good album. This might put off fans of the band's more rock-oriented side, but for those who enjoy their electronic landscapes this is quite neat.