FEED YOUR MIND

When I first heard Feed Your Mind, I was severely disappointed. I had heard good things about this band, and was expecting a crazy psychedelic space-rock trip along the lines of Hawkwind - and that's exactly what I got. What I did not expect is the album to be so terribly derivative.

Feed Your Mind has all the same ingredients that made Hawkwind so succesful, the spacey synths, almost grunge-like heavy guitars, strong vocals, even the "space-whispers" are included in the opening track Tiny The Man. It took me a lot of spins to accept this and let go of my frustration, but when I finally did, I really enjoyed what I heard.

Dark Sun's music is at the same time a bit heavier than Hawkwind's, but it's also more pop-oriented, for example Tiny The Man & the title track have some seriously catchy sections that you could sing along to. The album flows nicely from start to finish, and Dark Sun actually managed to dodge the mistakes Hawkwind often made - there are no fillers (well perhaps Phantastica, but it's not exactly a "song", more of an intro).

My favorites are Tiny The Man, Black Spires and The Next Step which is a haunting, nicely flowing calm (almost) instrumental, with lots of hypnotic synths and strong melodies. It's strongly reminiscent of Wish You Were Here era Pink Floyd, maybe that's why I like it so much, as I prefer PF over Hawkwind. Astral Magic sounds so much like Hawkwind that it could be straight from Warrior On The Edge Of Time and no one would notice that it's not their track...

In conclusion, I could say that this is a very enjoyable effort, but nevertheless, just a bit too derivative to make this anything but a good copy cat. Worth a spin, though, for those who crave for more Hawkwind-like space-rock (assuming you can find this somewhere...)