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Hawkwind - Leave No Star Unturned CD (album) cover

LEAVE NO STAR UNTURNED

Hawkwind

 

Psychedelic/Space Rock

3.49 | 20 ratings

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Warthur
Prog Reviewer
4 stars On the 27th January 1972, the Cambridge Corn Exchange hosted the Six Hour Technicolour Dream, a true feast of what was at the point the cutting edge of underground psychedelic space rock in the UK. Pink Fairies were on the bill, along with an outfit called the Last Minute Put Together Boogie Band which included ex-Fairies drummer Twink playing with special guests Fred Frith (soon to gain wider attention once Henry Cow finally got their debut album out) and Syd Barrett (post-Pink Floyd and his solo albums, pre-distressing weight gain and eyebrow-shaving).

And rounding out the offerings was a set from Hawkwind, at the time a comparatively new band - remember, they'd only put out their debut and In Search of Space at this point in time. With Lemmy having recently arrived, the band had clearly already settled into the ultra-heavy groove which would culminate in Space Ritual at the end of the year. Various bootlegs and releases of debatable official status have claimed to offer cuts from the Cambridge Corn Exchange gig over the years, but these have mostly been mislabellings. (Various reissues under various titles of the old Text of Festival recordings from 1970 and 1971 are particularly to blame for this.)

Happily, as the included booklet with the CD release explains, Leave No Star Unturned is the real deal. A partial recording of the set was unearthed in 1985, and later on tapes discovered in 2005 completed the picture. The tidying- up by EMI is really top-notch, with sound quality more or less equalling that of, say, the BBC session from the same year, and at points approaching Space Ritual quality. (Of all the 1972 sets that have had official releases, the Greasy Truckers Party probably is a notch lower quality in terms of sound, perhaps due in part to the technical problems captured on the recording).

So, if you dig the sound of live Hawkwind from this era (and a good many people can't get enough of it), Leave No Star Unturned is a great pick,. I wouldn't quite put it on the level of Space Ritual, but it's dang close, and includes the additional interest of a version of Silver Machine on which Robert Calvert takes the lead vocals - rather than Lemmy as would customarily become the case once the Lemmy-fronted single became the unexpected monster hit that it was.

Warthur | 4/5 |

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