CHOOSE YOUR MASQUES

On the basis of the not-quite-title track (the song is "Choose Your Masks", the album is "Choose Your Masques"), one could mistake Choose Your Masques for a continuation of the "space metal" approach of the preceding Sonic Attack - Church of Hawkwind being more of a Dave Brock side project than an official Hawkwind album. As it unfolds, the album actually seems to be a melding of the guitar-led sound of Space Ritual with the electronic explorations of Church of Hawkwind - guitars and synths having always had something of an uneasy alliance within Hawkwind's ranks - in order to form a new and better balance between the two.

There's some issues here and there with the production sounding a little muzzy - I wonder whether there was budgetary constraints this time around which forced them to record this one on the cheap. At first I questioned the point of including yet another rendition of Silver Machine on here - especially since Dave Brock had tried to kill the song off by blowing it up at the end of Live Seventy Nine - but it fits into the particular groove of this album rather well. If Sonic Attack was Space Metal, Choose Your Masques is space pop-metal with the occasional progressive foray - a strange mix which it took me a while to get my head around, but which is rather engaging now I know my way around it a bit better.