Psychedelic/Space Rock
United Kingdom
A friend sent me tapes of Hall of the Mountain Grill and Space Bandits. These are great albums for Floyd fans, especially HofMG. Very heavy, psychedelic music with lots of tape effects. Recommended. I'll definately be buying more Hawkwind, but I've heard that their many albums have spanned a wide musical range.
An amazing mix of prog rock, metal, psychadelic and jazz. Hall of the Mountain Grill, Levitation, Xenon Codex and Space Bandits are great places to start.
I wouldn't have been able to say which one I liked the best until I heard the just released BBC Radio One live from them. This album definitely epitomizes early Hawkwind, and the sound quality is good to boot!
Hard-rock/psychedelic/acid band that is often terribly overrated in progressive circles because of the heavy use of synthesizers, probably more than any other band I'd care to name that isn't German. Take away the synthesizers and you basically have pretty simplistic hard rock, with foursquare rhythms, vocals with two-note ranges, and redundant riffing. As a result, much of these albums sound pretty much the same. The best ones, i.e. most progressive sounding, are the ones with keyboardist/violinist Simon House (Hall Of The Mountain Grill and Warrior on the Edge of Time). I can't tell any of the others apart. -- Mike Ohman
Honestly, I'm not sure how this band got the cult following that it did. Actually, I can understand how it got it, but not how it kept it. Hawkwind used to give free concerts in the late 1960's, similar to the Grateful Dead, who also has a large, loyal cult following. Hawkwind has developed a heavy psychedelic space rock, with lots of sound effects interspersed throughout tons of simple, heavy, plodding guitar riffing. I got rid of the much praised BBC Radio 1 concert that was originally released on CD, but I do like In Search of Space, their second album. For me, it's enough. -- Mike Taylor
Hard rock with HEAVY use of synths that sometimes borders on cacophony. At least thats what their new stuff is like. I have Live Chronicles, Xenon Codex and Space Bandits, I like them all. Their creativity seems to be in the use of the synths to add to the intense moods of their songs. Some songs are just synth effects over bass and guitar pounding out the same note or chord. I don't really care for their old stuff.
Hawkwind was the master of the acid-space rock genre. What Pink Floyd stretched to reach, Hawkwind tooks as normal and extended it into the stratosphere. The pillars of Dave Brock and Michael Moorcock (later a science fiction writer) wrote about humanity and its response to the infinite awe and power of the universe. This band also explored the power of poetry/spoken words in many of their songs. The albums listed above demonstrate the power of synthesizers and science fiction at creating new worlds to explore (musically).
I could write for hours about Hawkwind, but instead here is a quick write up about the worlds best underground band. The leader of Hawkwind is Dave Brock. While membership has hardly been steady, for various reasons including Dave Brock getting tired of some people and telling them to leave, the sound has. Brock does allow each member to contribute, so this gives Hawkwind a different sound for each alignment, yet it always sounds like Hawkwind. The sound is psychedelic, and depending on the era, with a heavy metal twist, (the most common sound, "Silver Machine" was a big hit with this sound) a disco twist (a sound Brock didn't like so he reshaped the group after the album Amazing Sounds and Stories, which is a great album never the less), an almost jazz feel (Hawkwind), and a modern electronic feel on the latest (Electric Teepee). And they always had pop tendencies behind many of the songs, but yet is was never any of the above. It was, and is, Hawkwind. They also had a couple poets who contributed reading there poetry live as well as on record. They did "break up" for a while in the 70's and went by the name of Hawklords. This was mainly for contract reasons. This lasted only a couple years, and then Hawkwind came back. Two noted musicians have belong to Hawkwind. Lemmy was the bass player after John A. Harrison left in the early 70's. Lemmy was fired when he was kept by custom officials at the Canadian border and when he got back they already has a new bass player (Paul Ruldoph I believe). Lemmy went on to fame in Motorhead, a group name after a Hawkwind song he wrote and recorded for them. Ginger Baker was member in the late 70's, well past he Cream days. He was fired by Brock, but I never heard the reason - if there was one. Albums I recommend: A Space In Time, Warriors On the Edge of Time, Quarks Strangeness and Charm, Levitation and Electric Teepee. You can go wrong with any of the 70's releases in my opinion.
A lot of people really like them. I hear that Michael Moorcock writes a lot of their lyrics lately, and has been known to go on tour with them on occasion. I only have The Best of and the Rest of Hawkwind Live, and though it showed some potential, it really didn't do much for me.
Robert Calvert, born 1945 in South Africa starts his first artistic experiments in Margate, where his parents had settled around 1947. He begins to write poetry at an early age and founds a comedy-beat combo, similar in the style of the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band. In the late '60s he moves to London and gets immediately involved in the evolving psychedelic / underground culture. His poetry gets published in the "New Worlds" magazine, then edited by the nowadays famous SF-writer and one of the founders of the "New Wave" in SF-literature, Michael Moorcock. Via his old friend Nik Turner, Calvert gets acquainted with the band Hawkwind - one of the most vital and influential bands of those days. Calvert becomes their "resident poet" and appears in most of their gigs in between the songs, reciting his own and M. Moorcock's poetry - quite in contrast to the overall stageshow - in which the rest of the band is more or less hiding behind the usual psychedelic light show, Calvert, short haired, speaks clearly, straight forward into the audience - often with such intensity that he's totally worn out after the gig. He is also co-writing and singing a few of Hawkwinds songs and finally writes the lyrics for Hawkwinds one and only hit-single "Silver Machine." The success of this allows Hawkwind to realize their now legendary Space Ritual show - a conceptual idea of Calvert, combining Space-Rock music, poetry, and various other stage-acts. The next single named "Urban Guerilla"; written and sung by Calvert is actually climbing the charts when it gets banned by the radio stations after an IRA bomb assault.
In 1973 Calvert leaves Hawkwind in order to work on his first solo-record.
In late '75 he guests with Hawkwind at the Reading festival gig and eventually decides to re-join the group. A few weeks later he becomes Hawkwind's first (and until now only) constant lead-singer. In fact he becomes much more than just a singer. He continues and furthers his ambitious stage-shows. He designs and enacts various characters during the shows, wears various costumes, makes use of different props. In '76 and '77 the stage is occupied by a giant model, based on an atomic structure: "Atomhenge," a futuristic Stonehenge-stage-sculpture. In 1977 the band has reduced and strengthened its line-up and is releasing the mile-stone album Quark, Strangeness and Charm - a unique mix of psychedelic, industrial and even some Arabian influences. A perfect blend of the different talents in the band: the strong songwriting team of Dave Brock and Bob Calvert who adds some of his most powerful and imaginative lyrics (just listen to the title track!), Simon House an amazingly gifted violin and keyboard player, Simon King a strong and pushing drummer and finally the new member Adrian Shaw on bass whose inventive and variable bass lines provide the pulsating, energetic structure around which the whole band is evolving it's unique style. Quark... in it's originality and inventiveness stands also as a pre-decessor to the up-coming New Wave. An album, absolutely in touch with the modern and the future world: Calvert's lyrics comprise themes like genetics, post-nuclear war scenarios, terroristic/political (who can tell the difference?) threats from the rising power of the oriental (fundamentalistic) spheres - and some kind of a requiem on the classical psychedelic /underground days of the late 60's. Quark... is without a doubt one of the most important albums to come out of the 70's.
Two more albums with Hawkwind are following - of similar high quality: PXR5 and 25 Years On - the latter one released under the bandname Hawklords. Despite the ongoing creative and commercial success the rest of the band finds it more and more difficult to work with the manic Mr. Calvert. On long tours Calvert experiences more and more difficulties in leaving the characters behind he is evoking on the stage. Finally he insists to travel even during daytime in his full combat gear stage dress - complete with his gas-pistol on the hip - during the heyday of European terrorism in the late '70s, having the German RAF and other terroristic groups all over the headlines of European newspapers. Some nasty scenes from those days are reported. In late '78, Calvert finally leaves the band, though he will appear for some rare live-guestings in the later years. -- Knut Gerwers
The 1990's is a period of Hawkwind often overlooked, the common view being that the band ceased to become interesting after Space Ritual or Warrior on the Edge of Time. Without criticising those albums, IMO some of the more recent albums are amongst the best the band has ever recorded, with Dave Brock in fine form, and a rhythm section (Alan Davey & Richard Chadwick) with abilities far exceeding those of their predecessors.
Hawkwind started out the 1990's with Space Bandits, featuring Simon House as guest, and new drummer Richard Chadwick. Despite lacking Lloyd Langton, overall this is a decent effort, with a mix of heavy riffing, atmospheric interludes, narration, and some fantastic violin work from House particularly in the 10 min. opener "Images". Palace Springs is a strong live album with a good sound, and IMO probably a better representation of the band at this time than Space Bandits. It also features Simon House, and there is some nice moog work from Bainbridge on "Golden Void". Guest vocalist Bridget Wishart (on some tracks)is one of the weaker elements of these two albums.
Electric Tepee saw the band trimmed down to a 3 piece, with Bainbridge leaving in 1991. Despite another personnel loss, Hawkwind turned out a brilliant double album, highly instrumental and full of consistently strong material, from heavy space rock founded Alan Davey's signature bass chords with powerful drumming and spacey effects, to the most ambient of synthscapes. Definitely one of the most progressive Hawkwind albums,it gets my highest recommendation, IMO it is the best since Warrior or Levitation. This is a must have!
The follow up album, It is the Business of the Future to be Dangerous explores the experimental elements of Electric Tepee even further, with layer upon layer of spacey synths, samples and loops, and no vocals until 40 minutes into the album. Here Brock and Davey concentrate on synths, with minimal guitar or bass. The flow of the album is interrupted only by the somewhat inappropriate cover of the Stones' "Gimme Shelter". This album shows Hawkwind are still highly innovative, but still has a sound that is uniquely their own. Also very highly recommended. Although not as good as the previous 2 albums, The Business Trip Live, from the following tour has a suprisingly full sound, courtesy of sequencers and tapes, and shows that the band as a 3 piece could deliver the goods live as well as in the studio. Another fine album.
In 1995, after an experimental stint under the alias "Psychedlic Warlords" which produced the album White Zone, Hawkwind recruited a new front man, vocalist Ron Tree, and recorded Alien 4 - a concept album based around the theme of aliens (in part a metaphor for the band's own feelings of isolation from the music industry) This album marks a return to a more traditional space rock sound and away from the cosmic ohm type jams of the previous albums, but still retains some of the experimental sensibility. Overall a heavier sound, based around Davey's huge overdriven bass, lots of synths and more of Brock's acid drenched sound and gliss guitar. Love in Space from the Alien tour is another great live album, with an extended bass workout from Alan Davey in the 10 min+ "Sputnik Stan". Although Ron Tree adds a certain presence to the band, with strange narrations and lyrics hinting sometimes at Calvert or Turner, his vocal style leans towards alternative/punk in delivery, and can be annoying at times. Both these albums recommended.
By 1997, Davey had left to pursue his (excellent) solo career, with Ron Tree taking over bass duties and the arrival of new guitarist, Jerry Richards (not quite Lloyd Langton, but good nonetheless). With a streamlined, harder edged sound, and less use of synths, Distant Horizons seems to pale by comparison to the previous 5 albums. IMO the band seems to lack something vital without Davey. Overall a mixed bag but still worth a listen.
Hawkwind in your Area the most recent release is half live, half new studio material. Similar in vein to Distant Horizons, it has some good tracks to offer, but overall is a little disappointing. The highlight of the live material is the version of Calvert's "Aerospaceage Inferno". IMO the studio material seems lacking in direction, and the addition of Captain Rizz (guest reggae style vocals) does not really complement the music. -- Daniel Briggs
ALBUMS:
2010 - BLOOD OF THE EARTH
- Dave Brock / guitar, vocals, synthesizers
- Mr. Dibs / bass, vocals
- Richard Chadwick / drums, percussion, vocals
- Tim Blake / keyboards
- Niall Hone / guitar, bass, keyboards
track list LP/CD
1. Seahawks (6:14)
2. Blood Of The Earth (2:59)
3. Wraith (6:07)
4. Green Machine (4:04)
5. Inner Visions (4:29)
6. Sweet Obsession (4:45)
7. Comfy Chair (4:54)
8. Prometheus (5:48)
9. You'd Better Believe It (7:11)
10. Sentinel (6:03)
11. Starshine (7:11)
Look!!
