DAYS OF THE UNDERGROUND: THE STUDIO & LIVE RECORDINGS 1977-1979

Although their most seminal period was around the heady days of Space Ritual, Hawkwind's late-1970s work also deserves attention, and Days of the Underground offers a deluxe look at this period in the band's history. For one thing, it comes with three freshly-baked Steven Wilson mixes of their 1977-1978 studio albums - Quark, Strangeness and Charm, PXR5, and 25 Years On (released under the Hawklords moniker), all of which present significant sonic improvements over previous CD issues and really refresh the material while remaining true to the original spirit of the releases. Blu-ray offerings of these mixes in 5.1 surround sound are also presented.

As well as those three albums we get a disc of studio sessions from Rockfield Studios from January 1977, which captures the band working out much of the material which would form Quark, Strangeness & Charm. You get early versions of most of the songs there - a bit trippier, looser, and more jam-like than the more polished takes on the album, and so perhaps to some tastes better - as well as a clutch of improvisations.

A brace of live shows from September 1977 showcase how the band sounded promoting Quark, Strangeness & Charm (and test-driving material which would make it onto PXR5) on the road. The best of these is probably the Leicester show, but all of the live extracts here show the band taking an approach which blends their classic style with just a touch of manic punk energy. Of all the psych-space-prog groups of the early 1970s, Hawkwind's DIY approach and political forthrightness perhaps left them best-placed to be adopted by the punk era, and these live shows demonstrate why.

The legendary "Sonic Assassins" gig from December 1977 is also included here - a one-off gig which experimented with folding some members of local Devon band Ark into the Hawkwind line-up. Subsequent lineup changes would lead to some of the Ark lads becoming members of Hawkwind more full-time; in particular, Harvey Bainbridge would be a lynchpin of Hawkwind's 1980s sound. Whilst Robert Calvert had to be gently coaxed into performing the gig - he was concerned about the lack of rehearsals - the injection of new blood into Hawkwind here gives things a new dynamic, with the keyboards in particular taking a significant step forwards.

Last up is the Brunel University live recording originally released as Live '78, an excellent release capturing the Hawklords-era band in fine form, both in CD form and with some extracts presented in video form on the supplementary Blu-Rays.

This is the sort of Hawkwind set we need more of. A lot of the live and unreleased studio material has been released before, sure, but aside from the Live '78 show a lot of it has been in the form of a few tracks here and a few tracks there on a disparate range of sometimes quite hit-and-miss compilations and EPs. By contrast, this is a one-stop shop which will give you not only all three albums from this period of the band, but a generous helping of live shows at that. I sincerely hope they intend to do more of these, at least for those periods where Atomhenge have the rights to the relevant albums; a collection covering the period of Warrior On the Edge of Time and Astounding Sounds, Amazing Music would be grand, as would a set spanning 1979 to the early 1980s or one doing a deep dive on the Chronicle of the Black Sword period.