"idem"
Year: 1970
Label: Liberty
Format: CD, LP
Tracks: 7
Time: 40 min.
Genre: rock
Style: Space Rock
Year: 1975
Country: UK
City: London
Label: United Artists
Format: CD, LP
Tracks: 11
Time: 60 min.
Genrre: rock
Style: Space Rock
Formed in 1969, Hawkwind are a prolific and pioneering space-rock group from the UK. Within weeks of their formation, the band had made a name for themselves on the free festival circuit and would perform live without fee wherever they were able. By the time of their 1971 album 'X In Search Of Space', Hawkwind were infamous for their science fiction themed music and theatrical concerts, the latter renowned as exhibitions of pulsing electronics, dazzling light shows, LSD consumption and (from 1971-75) a nude dancer in the form of Stacia Blake .
Despite a near-constant revolving door of members, Founder member Dave Brock has been the sole mainstay and the core of the band since its inception and has steered the band from its psychedelic rock roots into flirtations with heavy metal, new wave, ambient and techno. Notable contributors have included "accidental" bassist Lemmy (who would go on to greater fame with Motörhead), Cream (2)'s Ginger Baker and science fiction writer Michael Moorcock.
Year: 1971
Label: United Artists
Format: CD, LP
Tracks: 6
Time: 50 min.
Genre: rock
Style: Space Rock
"space ritual"
Year: 1973
Label: United Artists
Format: 2 x CD, 2 x LP
Tracks: 16
Time: 87 min.
Genre: rock
Style: Space Rock
Crucial reissue from a band whose disorienting electronic drones and motorik rhythms were akin to their Krautrock contemporaries, but who also could make a racket as unrelentingly punchy and violent as anything from the Stooges' Fun House.
It's been said that the span between 2001: A Space Odyssey and Star Wars was science fiction's downer period, with the grim silliness of TV shows like Space: 1999 and dystopian unhappy-ending movies like Soylent Green and The Omega Man dampening the optimism of NASA's space exploration with constant warnings of a gloomy future and post-apocalyptic isolation. But it was a golden age for sci-fi in pop music: Between the unbridled creativity of Sun Ra's Philadelphia years, the development of Parliament's intergalactic mythos, and David Bowie being David Bowie, there were plenty of artists who saw something promising outside the bounds of Earth.
And aside from Sun Ra, few artists captured that sense of mind-warping, my-God-it's-full-of-stars astronomical mysticism in their music like Hawkwind. With their tendency towards extended jams full of disorienting electronic drones and drummer Simon King's motorik rhythms, they had a certain creative kinship with their Krautrock contemporaries. But their racket could also be as unrelentingly punchy and violent as anything from the Stooges' Fun House, especially considering guitarist Dave Brock's Ron Asheton-esque affinity for blistering, wah-wah-drenched riffs and Nik Turner's freeform sax outbursts, which were more Steve MacKay than John Gilmore. It was all put to good use by their lyrics and their philosophy, much of which was inspired by the writing of sci-fi author and sometime collaborator Michael Moorcock, and typically themed around interstellar travel, metaphysics and Pythagoras' theory of celestial-mathematical "music of the spheres."
If this all seems a bit dense and weird and impenetrable, rest assured that Hawkwind's arcanum isn't too difficult to get caught up in, especially via their circa-1972 lineup-- which delivered plenty of straightforward rock riffage amidst all the special effects and featured, amongst the aforementioned personnel, a former rhythm guitarist turned bassist named Lemmy Kilmister. Space Ritual, recorded over two separate concert dates in London and Liverpool in December 1972, is a solid effort at capturing what made Hawkwind a cult favorite, and the Collector's Edition pads it out just enough to keep things from being too overwhelming. The set has been expanded from its original "88 minutes of brain damage" (as a 1973 print ad hilariously put it) to just over two hours, with most of the added material devoted to a few alternate takes and the restoration of a few minutes here and there that had to be cut for the original United Artists double LP. (A bonus DVD includes the whole shebang in Dolby, and despite it being in PAL format, North American viewers should be able to hear it on their PCs or DVD players.) The flow of the concert typically alternates between spoken-word passages about time, space and the future, delivered with ominous camp by resident poet Robert Calvert, and extended, high-velocity performances of material from their '72 album Doremi Fasol Latido, with a handful of non-album tracks thrown in for good measure. Everything you need to glean from this album can be heard in the first 20 minutes: The Electric Ladyland-esque hue and cry of the distortion-heavy opening cut "Earth Calling", the 10-minute "T.V. Eye"-gone-starfighting assault of "Born to Go", the rumbling vortex of bass in "Down Through the Night" and the Calvert space-voyage poem "The Awakening" ("Landing itself was nothing/We touched upon a shelf of rock/selected by the automind/And left a galaxy of dreams behind...") ...continue to read this review by Nate Patrin .
"levitation"
Year: 1980
Label: Bronze
Format: CD, LP
Tracks: 9
Time. 40 min.
Genre: rock
Style: Space Rock