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GAMMAPOLISZ (Ù 9)Omega |
THE XENON CODEXHawkwind |
LORD SPACE DEVILCosmic Trip Machine |
BABY GRANDMOTHERSBaby Grandmothers |
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Review by
sinkadotentree
Prog Reviewer
I have their two studio albums and the live one.This is my least favourite,mostly because of the
female singer who's vocals i'm just not a fan of.
This is mellotron heaven though and that's what makes it so good along with the tracks i'm
familiar with from their live release.Interesting that those songs feature male vocals. "Butterfly
Sky" is a dreamy,melancholic tune with lots of mellotron and those laid back male
vocals.Great tune. "Rainbow Bridge" is another highlight.It's very mellow to start.Male vocals
after 4 minutes.This sounds so beautiful.The vocals become more passionate 5 1/2 minutes
in. "Raga" is the other highlight for me.
I love the style of music this band from New Zealand plays and if you can get your hands on
their "Nooks" album or the live one you will be impressed i'm sure.This one is good but the
female vocals bring down the rating for me.3.5 stars.
Review by mscbox
Ummagumma is one of the albums that is special. Special, because it is a unique album, in a
style not done by others, certainly not before. It is also an album that creates a specific
atmosphere, a specialty that belongs to Pink Floyd anyway. But is the music exceptionally
good? Are there songs on this album that ask for special attention? I am afraid that my answer
is no. It is nice to listen to, but it is not the music that you often listen to. I have to say that
especially the "solostic" parts on the original second lp weaken the album to a rating of only a
3. That is a pity because the first LP is maybe not excellent but at least essential due to the
uniqueness.
Review by
Bonnek
Prog Reviewer
After a disappointing decade, Hawkwind regained some of their stamina in the 90's and became a
trusted source again for good studio albums and excellent live ones. Generally, all of the 90's
albums vary ambient synth pieces with classic Hawkwind hard-rocking trips. The rocking side is represented by the magnificent opener LSD. Alan Davey lays down a great bass groove that makes us finally stop to regret that Lemmy left in 1975. After the two opening minutes with typical Hawkwind chants, his heavy rolling bass takes the lead in the 6 minute improvisation that follows. More psychedelic punkrock and thumping bass can be enjoyed on The Secret Agent and Right To Decide. But there are also a number of rock songs that feel less inspired, Mask of the Morning and Sadness Runs Deep are average Hawkwind songs that need lots of sparkling effects and Arabian-tinged syrup to make them somewhat enjoyable.
Those 5 rockers make up 35 minutes of the album. The other half is filled with very strong instrumentals that go from Schulzean dreamscapes such as the lovely Blue Shift and Space Dust to mid-paced 'Gong meets Pink Floyd' excursions such as Death of War and Don't Understand. The world-beat of Going To Hawaii almost sounds like an outtake from Peter Gabriel's Passion that was buried under a thick Hawkwind synth gravy. Nice one.
Electric Tepee is a slightly uneven but fine album to extend your Hawkwind experience. Live albums not included, I would place this one a league behind my favourite trio of Warrior, Quark & Levitation. But it's still worth an upped 3.5 stars.
Review by Kyle McTreehugger
I actually found out about this band just from randomly clicking on a psychadelic band that had
a cool name because I'm very into psychadelic. So I decided to dowload their newest album
so I could get a feel for the direction the band had been headed. The Yum Yum Tree is the first
album that I have listened to of this band. Although, I normally prefer a less synthesized sound,
this album won me over within the first couple minutes. Every moment of listening to this
album was pure amazement and happiness that I had found such an amazing album. The
level of musicianship I feel is substantial enough to satisfy prog fans. The song Oddweird is a
very happy one that I especially injoyed on the album. Styles of funk, reggae, and others are
present sparsely which give the album a nice sound variety.
Review by
snobb
Special Collaborator Jazz Rock/Fusion
What a pleasant surprise! From the very first sounds I was really attracted by this
album's music! Short opener is acoustic neo-classic intro, very soon continued by great
spacey jazz-rock "Vasta Wazza " composition with some oriental influences and strong Gong
roots. Excellent fusion drumming and flute built perfect soundscapes."Dub Dub" is reggae
rhythm based compositions, but very airy, full of flute, guitar and percussion."Happy Dragon" all are Ian Anderson-like flute, but with bluesy guitar, jazzy bass and drums all around. Fresh and interesting."Vanishing Point" is more psychedelic song, but again - very light and airy."Sugar Glider ?shows you great bass, spacey sound effects and wah- wah electric guitar in fast pulsation.
"Mantra" has its Anduvian flute scent in combination with oriental melody. Eastern winds gave even bigger effect there in songs sound.
Very interesting and quite unusual work. If not too much inventive, music there is so fresh, pleasant and almost hypnotizing, that will return back to listen this album again very soon!
Review by
Bonnek
Prog Reviewer
Xenon Codex is appreciated by many fans as a return to form. For me it's a "no, not really".
It's a flat and dreary album. Being quite the Hawkfan, this would banish it to that one desolate
star. But I think I'll reserve that one for the 1982/1983 albums if I ever get to review them. The problem is not in the intention. I'm sure the band had the ambition to do a good space-rock album that stayed true to all spaceship commands. But they decided to make it sound up to date, and that wasn't a particularly good idea in 1988. Before the Pixies and Nirvana restored the rock sound and before thrash metal surfaced in the mainstream, a deteriorated plastic pastiche of the early 80's new wave sound was the flavour of the day. For a rock band like Hawkwind that is a let-down. The synthetic drums are so devoid of life, it's painful.
But also the songs aren't much to write home about, too much rock clichés with repetitive vocals that make each track sound like 20 other Hawkwind tunes. There are songs with some potential though. The War I Survived can surely be made into a lot of fun in a live setting. Wastelands of Sleep has a nice spacey guitar that washes over an electronic pulse. Also Heads resides in similar droning trances, but a much better version appears on Palace Springs.
That's all there is to it for me; the remainder pretty much passes me by completely unnoticed.
Review by
Bonnek
Prog Reviewer
You can't go wrong with a Hawkwind Live one. It usually comes with the guarantee of a solid setlist
and an inspired performance. This California Brainstorm is from the short period when Bridget
Wishhart fronted Hawkwind, meaning that the official live album Palace Spring released in
1991 is an obvious point of reference. Compared to Palace Springs, this one is for completists. First of all there's the recording quality. All instruments are clearly audible but the frequency range is very limited. There's no power in the lower end and the high end is dull. Actually it sounds as if you would rip Palace Springs to a 96kbps mp3. Meaning thin and flat.
The setlist is quite interesting, featuring some old classic and rare live gems such as Ejection, Brainstorm and Reefer Madness (sung by Bridget). But none of these versions are a compulsory listen. The band plays tightly but the rearrangements are generally disappointing. Ejection lacks its original upbeat drive, Brainstorm is reduced to 3 minutes and extended with a reggae improvisation that also ended up on Palace Springs. Reefer Madness is better then its studio version but that wasn't hard to achieve given the lifeless original.
Void's End is better avoided. It's just an improvisation on the instrumental middle part. Nothing like the superb version on Palace Springs. The more recent material is adequate but doesn't deviate too much from the studio originals. Definitely a fan's item.
Review by
Marty McFly
Collaborator Errors and Omissions Team
We have to differ good from bad guys and girls, men and women, ladies and gentlemen, prog night addicts and daytime
embracers, am I right ? When something quite good gets very good rating, we have to either adjust rating for even better album,
or fix first one to more fit to each other.This is under-estimated masterpiece. Orchestral parts forced to work together as slave labor to Pink Floyd's band members (except Nick, he gets sunshine most of the time). Of course, in this case, when counting out Mason, it's Gilmour who's most prominent, but that's standard situation here, so no raised eyebrows this time. First epic, or if you want, suite. I first heard it about six years ago, when my father was (intentionally) presenting me Pink Floyd's music. I remember two things: I didn't like it much and second one: it was ancient Roman like (these trumpets), it reminded me something like Quo Vadis, or simply these old Rome films. I've returned to this album again when I saw one certain thread about epics. Someone (thanks) said that AHM is in fact first epic. So I took this as a little push-forward and tried it.
5(-), I don't regret. It's one of these albums where you can enjoy every part of it and you're still smiling wide. So high rating because it's Pink Floyd = guarantee of quality. And so it works, it's a very good one. I've said it, I've said it.
Review by
Bonnek
Prog Reviewer
Hawkwind had a short and exciting fling with artsy punk in the 1977-1979 years. But in 1980 they
returned to their usual hard rocking space flare with their solid Levitation. So I really had
my hopes up for this one.And indeed, after 5 minutes of sonic poetry the album finally kicks off with Rocky Paths, a fun blast of space hardrock with a steady upbeat pace, good vocals and piercing guitar soloing. All of it drowned in an abundant cosmic synth soup. A classic!
But there's a notable difference with Levitation. Ginger Baker, who kicked the hell out of his kit on Levitation has left the spaceship and his replacement Martin Griffin restricts himself to basic rock rhythms. The drumkit also suffers from the typical 80's gated drums production (the big reverbed snare-syndrome). It kills off the attack and dynamism, for a drum aficionado like me, that's always a big loss.
A second problem with this album is the lack of ideas. Unless you get a kick out of sci-fi poetry, Sonic Attack, Psychosonia, Virgin of the World and Coded Language won't register any higher then filler status. And Tim Blake is surely missed on the unimaginative synth sequencing of Virgin of The World.
Next to Rocky Paths there's one other memorable song here: Angels of Death, which is also featured on each of the 34 subsequent live albums Hawkwind released since. The remainder of the songs are painful to listen to, seemingly thrown together from half-baked rock clichés with invariably recitative vocals and predictable arrangements. There's an occasional groove as on Trans-dimensional Man but they don't manage to do much with it.
Sonic Coma would have been a more suitable title.
Review by
Tarcisio Moura
Prog Reviewer
Eloy´s comeback after more than a decade has brought me a lot of mixed feelings when I first heard
it and ti still does after several spinnings. Visionary sounds like a sum of everything Eloy has
done in their career (but more specificly around the Planets/Time To Turn period). Which means that
nothing new came with this CD. It is mostly a reharsh of their former self. So I guess I should be
glad with that since I was never really charmed by their more eletronic work in albums like Ra and
Destination. The bad side of Visionary is that of the new songs: too much vocals (not one of their best aspects in any record) and not really convincing themes and arrangements. The playing is as fine as ever (great bass lines by Klaus-Peter Matziol, good guitar parts, very good vintage sounding keyboards). The main problem seems to be a lacking of boldiness like they did on Ocean 2 and The Tides Return Forever, where they again plowed on familiar ground but still delivered strong and relevant material. On Visionary the tunes are ok, but you have the strong impression you heard it all before and done in a better way: The Challenge for instance, is almost Time To Turn with another set of lyrics.
Conclusion: Visionary is a pleasant album, if you´re not a too demanding fan. Rating: somewhere 2,5 and 3 stars. Good, but not essential in any way.
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