HAWKWIND

By 1977, Hawkwind made a huge transformation. Nic Turner was gone and the line up from the previous album was changing. Dave Brocks and Robert Calverts cooperation was in the sourses given never easy and Calvert had left the Hawkship on several occations. But it seams like they tried to focus on a new direction for the band. And a new direction it was. All from the begining (Spririt of the age) you feel this "pulse", something that has not been there before. Robert Calverts previous role was (at least not on "Space Ritual") ,not prominent. He sort of gave the group a extra flavour. By now, he was in command together with Captain Brock. Together they transformed Hawkwind into something very up to date, by 1977 standards.

The band was a strong unit. Simon House on keyboard and viola, Adrian Shaw on wonderful bass and Simon King providing the classic Hawkwind beat. I am one of these people that admire the "Warriors on the edge on time" album. But a change was needed and this album made clear that the band had so much more to offer. And ineed they had!

If only Hawkwind could have achieved this level of sophistication and songwriting prowess more frequently... This was one of my first introductions to Hawkwind, and given its consistent songwriting and rock-solid musicianship from beginning to end, led me to believe that their earliest period was too "primitive" for my taste at the time (hey, this was ages ago, I've realized my short-sightedness).

"Motorway City" will always be one of my favorite tracks by Hawkwind as it contains all of their main ingedients: catchy, straightforward guitar, "beep-and-sweep" keyboards from another dimension, a driving rhythym more hard rock than prog (the New Wave of British Heavy Metal was happening at this time), and futuristic lyrics that could only come from this band. The overall atmosphere of "Levitation" sets itself alongside bands of other genres from the post- prog, post-punk era - social and urban decay, claustrophobia, and a general feeling of isolation found by many at the tail end of the 1970s.

If you thought HW was washed up by the late-70s, do check this out for the brilliant production quality, excellent drumming provided by none other than Ginger Baker, Tim Blake's lush and sophisticated keyboards, and searing guitarwork by Dave Brock.

Although not as profound, Chronicle Of The Black Sword echoes Hawkwind`s 1975 tour de force Warrior On The Edge Of Time a decade later and brings scifi / fantasy master Michael Moorcock back into the fold.

Based largely on the exploits of anti hero Elric of Melniboné on an alternate Earth who first appeared in the 1961 Moorcock novella " Dreaming City ", Chronicle of the Black Sword is harder driving and really rocks it out for the most part but nonetheless nods back to Hawkwind formulas of the past. Don`t expect anything as compelling as Magnu or Assault & Battery / The Golden Void but it contains many Hawkwind hallmarks. There are spacey interludes ( The Pusling Caverns, Chaos Army, The Demise ), a cool ballad as only hawkwind could conjure ( Zarozinia, who becomes Elric`s wife ), a short but compelling atmospheric ambient / electronic mind trip ( Shade Gate ) and some reminders of the Quark Strangeness And Charm era ( Elric The Enchanter ).

Sevral CD re-issues have appeared with live bonus tracks but I would recommend the most recent June 2009 Atomhenge release which includes the EP Earth Ritual Review as a bonus which was originally released in `83 and has been long since deleted and contains four tracks, Night Of The Hawks ( with Lemmy ) Green Finned Demon, Dream Dancers and the catchy Dragons And Fables, which were only available on anthologies such as Ambient Anarchists and others.

My biggest dissappointment when the album was released back in `85 was that, given the depth of the Elric character and the number of Elric adventures that Moorcock had penned up to that point I thought there was more potential and possibilities for a 3 album epic blowout. One track, Needle Gun doesn`t even really have anything to do with the Elric sagas. Needle gun refers to another Moorcock character, an anarchistic secret agent, Jerry Cornelius who has no respect for authority and gets into jams. Nonetheless a great harder edged Hawkwind track. In fact this whole quasi-concept album is arguably Hawkwind`s finest recording of the eighties despite not exploiting the full potential of the subject matter , although it was expanded on in the tour and subsequent live album, Live Chronicles.

With an unstable lineup in the early eighties and no studio album for almost 3 years it seemed that the Hawks were heading for a monumental catastrophe. But it seemed that the addition of bassist / vocalist Alan Davey ( who had sent a tape to Dave Brock and hired almost on the spot ) and the appearance of this remarkable album seemed to save the day turning back the clock to the classic years of albums such as the already metioned Warrior On The Edge Of Time and The Hall Of The Mountain Grill.

Highly recommended Hawkwind album with alternate cover art, the original having more to do with the subject matter than the one pictured here. Go Nuts freak out. This IS Hawkwind.

Halfway through the 80's Hawkwind were a hard rocking unit, as if they wanted to recover some space occupied by Motorhead since Lemmy left 10 years earlier. Unfortunately, some Hawkwind songs do not fare well from this straightforward approach.

Songs like Utopia and Masters of the Universe work well under the increased speed and riffing. But Assault and Battery is indeed very much battered here and is stripped from it dramatic build and melodic harmonies. Magnu suffers the same treatment. The sung parts are quite well but the rhythm has lost all of it's droning power and is reduced to the most basic of rock beats: kick-snare-kick-snare.

Assassins of Allah (Hassan I Sahba) is just dreadful. They've done like hundred of amazing performances of this tune but this is bland hard rock here. The one reason you might want to check this album out is because they have Lemmy on Silver Machine. Not that it is any better then the original but still, it's quite something of an event, unique to this festival.

For all casual fans, you can easily skip forward all of Hawkwinds output from 1980's Levitation up to 1990. Even the live output won't challenge you.

PXRS concludes Hawkwind dive into space new wave. After this album they would return to more familiar universes with the excellent space rock album Levitation.

PXR5 is a pleasant album but it is a bit uneven and has not one track that equals QSAC in quality. The pure punk of Death Trap comes closest of all. Hawkwind goes Buzzcocks here! Uncle Sam's on Mars is something entirely different and could have been on Pink Floyd's debut. Very psychedelic tune but it drags on a bit. Infinity has one of the few vocals from Brock on the album. It's a nasal croon not dissimilar from a track like Paradox.

Robot is Brainstorm all over again. There's more lyrics and Calvert rants then on Brainstorm but it has a similar riff, similar drone, spacey effects and unfortunately also the rather inadequate melodies that never really clicked with me. It's not bad but lacks a bit of punch to remain interesting for its entire 8 minutes. (Let's say I prefer the book :-) High Rise is a decent ballad and PXR5, the other track that has lead vocals from David Brock, is unremarkable punk rock.

Not bad but a bit of a mixed bag.

Hawklords 25 Years on continues in the new-found flair of QSaC. Unfortunately the song quality doesn't entirely measure up to it.

PSI Power is a good opener but exists in better live versions, The Only Ones and the Cold War Kid are sleek pop songs that will sure please David Bowie fans. But the real standouts for me are Free Fall and the Flying Doctor. Both are very tight and gripping songs where Hawklords found an excellent merge between their psychedelic space rock and the no nonsense attitude of punk. For traditional Hawkwind fans who are displeased by QSaC and PXR5, those two tracks might be your way into this incarnation of Hawkwind.

The muse of Hawkwind moves in mysterious ways.

After the space crash that was called Astounding Sounds and Amazing Music, Hawkwind found their inspiration back and everything that didn't work on the preceding album turns out for the good here. Calvert is in fine form and the band sounds clean and crunchy.

What we get on our plate is a completely revamped Hawkwind. They still maintained that typical guitar strumming, the rhythmic pace, the eastern melodies and their excellent song writing, but the style and sound are completely updated: the style is something that comes close to arty punk pop and the sound is fresh and new, closer to the art-rock of David Bowie or Roxy Music than to their original space drone.

The sound has lost most of its space feel: out are the swirling saxophones, guitar effects, mellotrons and moogs. They are replaced by a battery of the then modern keyboards that many new wave groups like Japan, Magazine and countless others would start using just a year later.

By consequence they fit in wonderfully with the punk/new wave movement that was about to take off. In fact I would dare to say QSAC starts a 3 year period where Hawkwind became something of a punk-pop-prog band, that strangest of combinations :-) As such, they proved to be one of those few early 70's bands that were able to blend in with the new times successfully.

Hawkfans be warned, this is something completely different, but essential it is.

Don't be fooled its misleading title, this is Hawkwind live 1974. Sometimes cited as a companion album to Space Ritual and as a worthy addition to your expanding Hawkwind universe.

A first thing I noted was that the tracklist isn't all that different from SR. At that time Hawkwind didn't have 25 albums of material to make up a set from. On top of to the known tracks from SR, there are some singles and some material from Hall of the Mountain Grill. But they fail to convey the subtle atmospheres from that record. For once, a Hawkwind live fails to live up to a studio album.

Brainbox Solution never was much of an interesting tune and nor is this live version. It is scanty rockabilly and doesn't seem to inspire the musicians very much. Maybe this type of song would work in a tight Motorhead jacket, but it doesn't in Hawkwind's elaborated tapestries. I could repeat exactly the same for It's So Easy. This groove is too pedestrian to serve as the basis of an 11 minute jam. The ending isn't bad though.

You Know You're Only Dreaming is a first highlight. This song from ISOS just screamed for some thick mellotron and that is what they added here. The instrument is a bit in the background but nevertheless and improvement over the studio album.

Brainstorm and Seven by Seven are ok but don't live up to the versions from SR. Seven By Seven has an extended closing section added to it but it's nothing special really.

It's good to hear the Watcher here. It has evolved into something that comes close to how Motorhead played it later. On the contrary, Paradox is a murky affair and so is You'd Better Believe It, which never was very great tune anyway.

I really had my hopes high up to hear Psychedelic Warlords in a live version. Unfortunately they just play the single edit and pull it off very chaotically. D-Rider suffers from the same treatment.

All in all, not much of an necessary addition. The two tracks of interest feature on later live albums in even better versions: You Know You're Only Dreaming on The Business Trip and The Watcher on Spaced Out In London.

The great thing about In Search of Space is that Hawkwind have found their own spot in musical history. They stopped sounding like anybody else and reached an entrancing groove that was truly their own, a very original blend of 33% catchy strumming hard-rock, 33% improvisation and experimentation and 33% psychedelic essences. On this album they also retained some of their anarchistic kraut poise.

The not so great thing about it is that they still appear very insecure of what they're doing. As if they were all trying very hard not to play too loud in order not to get noticed. Suppose somebody could hear this? What would mom say?

Hawkwind lacked the confidence and oomph to pull off their ambitious space rock to optimal effect. Of course this is largely due to the production. Whoever was on the knobs here, he didn't know how to make this immense wall of sound come alive. A second reason would be that one more ingredient was missing in their space stew: they needed somebody to kick them out of their lethargy. That somebody would be Lemmy, who made his introduction on the forceful Silver Machine.

I'm a bit in doubt with my final verdict. I've never been entirely enthused by this album and it has never really grown on me. However, the re-mastered edition from 1996 has added 3 essential tracks to this package and sounds just a bit better. Given this is Hawkwind's most original statement it surely deserves 4 stars.

Hawkwind's debut sees them trying to find a sound of their own but very much failing at it. They don't seem to find a way to get beyond rehashing earlier Pink Floyd albums. Ok, I'll try to write this review without referring to Pink Floyd more then 10 times...

Hurry on Sundown is a pleasant psychedelic pop song that would have been quite a hit had it been released in 66 or 67. Three years later it sounds a bit out of date already. Pleasant tune though.

The Reason Is is a lot more remarkable, largely reminiscent to the opening section of PF's Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun (Umma Gumma version). But Hawkwind took it a step further, adding dissonant flute- and voice-effect sounds. The result is very close to what Tangerine Dream would be doing in the following years. With its modest 3 and a half minutes, this ambient experiment is very effective.

Be Yourself is less impressive, a monotonous improvisation, using the exact drum track from PF's Saucerful of Secrets. Not entirely bad but too much of a rip-off really. And Paranoia? Shake and mix Umma Gumma (disk 2) for 4 minutes. This could be close to the resulting tune.

So far, the album lacked in originality but was still pleasant enough for anybody on the psychedelic and kraut side of rock. However, with Seeing It as You Really Are, the album collapses. A dry and uninspired improvisation it is. The same goes for Mirror of Illusion.

Bring it on Home must be a mastering mistake. This is so obviously a track from Jethro Tull's debut.

This is a weak album. Luckily, the Hawk would fly into totally different directions on the second album. For the fans this debut may be an interesting release, also kraut rock fans might want to give this a try. Other ladies and gents, there's plenty of more enchanting universes to explore.