THE 1999 PARTY

Hawkwind archival live albums are, to say the least, thick on the ground - but this one has great sound quality and captures the band during one of their creative peaks. Just as the preceding year's Space Ritual tour would be based around the loose concept of a journey through the stars, the 1974 tour had as its schtick a trip through time to 1999 - but Prince isn't anywhere in sight.

What this amounts to is a sound much like a somewhat less overwhelming and rather more varied and technically adept take on the sound of Space Ritual, with a different enough setlist to be worth the price of entry. Material which would later end up on Hall of the Mountain Grill and Warrior On the Edge of Time also gets previewed. The band even manage to reclaim The Watcher from a quirky throwaway track from the end of Doremi Fasol Latido into something rather more powerful.

Watch out that you don't get fobbed off with the truncated 1CD version of this album, and you'll have a fine addition to any Hawkwind collection; this is a real gem that doesn't deserve to get loss in the mass of questionable live releases that have cluttered up the band's back catalogue.