THE BUSINESS TRIP

Hawkwind had been reduced to a three-piece in the mid-1990s, but on The Business Trip Dave Brock and company re- engineer themselves as a Space Rock-New Age power trio, wavering between blissful electronic explorations and thumping anthems at the drop of a hat. Everything flows together very smoothly and naturally, just as on the It Is the Business of the Future To Be Dangerous studio album, and the sound quality is the best enjoyed by a Hawkwind live album for quite some time.

The end result is another remarkable live release which is worth setting alongside the Live '78 Hawklords material or the mighty, majestic, Lemmy-powered Space Ritual. What's astonishing is how different each of those live releases sounds - perhaps the best testimony to how Hawkwind's sound has grown and changed and adapted over the years in the live context as well as the studio. There's a lot of dross out there when it comes to Hawkwind live releases but if you want something reflecting their early 1990s sound, don't mess about with bootlegs - go strictly Business and you can't go wrong.