SPACE RITUAL LIVE

Not to be confused with the original Space Ritual live album, this captures a 2014 with the present Hawkwind lineup celebrating that album's legacy over 40 years after its original release. CD1 offers a grab-bag of non-Space Ritual Hawkwind classics, whilst CD2 offers a full runthrough of the original double album length song cycle.

The material here isn't retooled very much, but arguably it doesn't need to be. Hearing Space Ritual without the thunderous underpinning of Lemmy's weapons-grade bass guitar is already transformative, teasing out some of the subtleties that were always there in the compositions, whilst the band add new embellishments in the light of a literal lifetime's familiarity with the material. This rendtiion won't displace the original for me by any stretch of the imagination, but it's an interesting alternative take on the idea.