HW: 1997 Space party/Free festival.

[Henrik Hallgren]

Hi again!

This time you can read about the festival held in Hamburg 13-15/6 this
year.
For me and my wife it was really a great moment.
We hope you should find the review interesting.

A report from the "Free" Festival (1997 space party) in Hamburg
13-15/6-97.

Unfortunately a litle bit late due to circumstances beyond my control.

The festival was organized by Thomas Leonhardt (Hawkfan from Hamburg)
and friends and they where also responsible for selling food and beer
and many other things I guess.

The festival was free but donations was welcome to minimize the loss
plus the income from selling food and beer ( and we drank a lot of beer
and ate one or two bratwurst).

There where some changes among the bands participating. darXtar had to
say no since the commander´s throat got infected by some virus and as a
replacement Dark Sun from Finland joined the forces.
Unfortunately Hawkwind couldn´t make either, due to other commitments.

Anyway, my wife and me was really looking forward to this trip down to
Germany since we needed some rest from work and school.
Our journey started 5.30 pm on Thursday 12/6 and we travelled by train
via Stockholm and Copenhagen, a journey which took us 18 hours. No
problem really since we met interesting people along the way, and of
course, we had booked two beds in a sleeping-car between Stockholm and
Copenhagen.
We arrived in Hamburg 1.30 pm next day and went immedietly to our hotel
in Harburg (south of Elbe and near the festival-area).
After a shower and new clothes we met Bernhard Pospiech who also was
staying at the same hotel, and it was indeed a pleasure to meet him
after so many e-mails, phonecalls and letters. It seems like the most of
us are having only contact via e-mail and so on, which is a pity I think
since there are so many friendly fans around the globe. Perhaps we need
more spacerock-festivals?
We went along to the area together and of course, almost immediately we
met more fans I knew from mail and otherwise. We also got the chance to
meet Dark Sun and the Moor for the very first time, although I´ve met
Kenneth Magnusson before. I´ve also had contact with Santtu from DS for
over two years so this was more like a family-meeting than a
rock-festival in a sense.
The festival was held at an industrial estate along South-Elbe and it
was a "green" and calm place. The place is usually used by a local
rock-club.

Groups that were playing:
On friday: The Rakes (local HM/bluesrock), Trev Thoms/Nik (ICU
unplugged) and Tribes of Cro (some kind of Ozric-styled group from UK)
On Saturday: Dark Sun (finnish heavy prog/spacerock), The Moor with Nik
(swedish heavy prog/avantgarderock plus the support from "our" Uncle)
and Alan Davey´s Bedouin.

The Rakes started the show and they sounded very much like Judas Priest,
especially the singer. Nothing for me though even if they played well
despite the poor sound.

Time for Trev Thoms and Nik doing a sort of ICU unplugged with the
standard-set of ICU-songs. I guess it´s OK if you fancy that kind of
music. We (me, my wife and Bernhard) left after about the half set and
went into the Altstadt of Harburg instead for some talking and
beer-drinking, quite nice actually since the weather was great (and the
company).

For that reason we missed Tribes of Cro completely but I guess if you´ve
heard Ozric Tentacles before...

Next day started with breakfast together with Bernhard at the hotel and
then a trip to the city of Hamburg for some shopping and just strolling
around.

We went back around 2 pm to the festival for some talk with other fans
and then Bernhard left for some anniversery in his hometown.





First band on Saturday was Dark Sun who started 6 pm and they started
with a real spacerock-song called "Abduction files" from their debut-CD
which is a marvellous track. What the song is about you can probably
imagine! Like almost every song they have done it´s plenty of guitars
and keyboards which I like a lot.
Next track "astral magic" continues the way the band started with a rich
and colorful sound. Perhaps a heavier version than before. But I guess
with a band consisting of seven members there´s lots of ideas and ways
of playing, although heavy prog/space is dominating.
Time for a new track called "Zombie tree" which sounds promising with
plenty of HM-guitars and strong vocals by the lead-singer. This song is
perhaps more HM than spacerock but what the heck!!! There´s a slower
part in the middle but only a short one.
"Our man inside" follows and is about agents and stuff like that. It
starts with swirling synths and followed by vocals and the rest of the
instrument. It´s a beautiful track with tasty guitarplaying and a solid
rhytm-section. Unfortunately some problems again with the sound.
Next track was "Tiny the man" and it starts like the most of the DS
songs with keyboards. The lyrics is read from the start on this one.
It´s a calmer and more relaxed song  but nevertheless interesting to
hear. The lyrics in their songs are also interesting and I suppose that
they´ve done their homework on Asimov, Clarke and so on. On this track
in the middle we also can hear a lovely organ-sound and that´s great I
think since I like Hammond-style sounds (Hey Keith! where are you?).
Last track before Nik is entering the stage is " Song the seaman´s
bane", another slow paced keyboard-oriented song with more prog than
space or HM. Well, at the end there´s some heavy playing.
Nik is entering the stage and two ambient tracks are played with
keyboards and sax.
It´s more of improvising by Nik but it´s good anyway, not the freakout
style but more disciplined playing. Usually he´s quite good at both sax
and flute.
The tracks are titled "Strange noises and "Time-space continuum" with
"Time.." sounding like a hymn of some kind, great and a touching tune
indeed.
After a few minutes the band starts to use other instruments as well and
it somehow reminds me of modern Tangerine Dream, a killer this one!


Time for the heavier part of the set which starts with "Black spires".
It is a traditional DS song with a higher tempo and played with lots of
enthusiasm and energy as usual.
Is it the finns famous SISU? I must also add that these guys can really
handle their equipment, which is something you can hear on both the CD
and on various live-tapes.
Time for the HW-covers and they perform two of my HW-favourite tracks
"Assault&Battery" and "Golden Void" and they do that like they did on
their demotape - fast and furious, perhaps the best version played so
far (IMHO). I said it when I heard the demotape and I´ve still got the
same opinion. Perhaps even more heavy live than in studio!
"Machine lover" comes next and this is yet another powerful song
performed brilliant and with lots of energy (a trademark of the band?).
Time for another HW-cover "The right stuff", played at high speed by the
band and Uncle Nik, amazing to say at least!
 Time for the last track "Mind eater", yet another track from their
debut-CD "Feed your mind" played at a higher speed than usual and an
excellent end of their firts show outside Finland, let´s hope we can see
more of them both in Scandinavia and Europe.

Next band on stage  is The Moor together with Nik and of course - Knut
Gerwers from Berlin and wellknown for his excellent work with "The
spirit of Robert Calvert" homepage. His contribution was to read
Calvert-poems between some track and if my menory serves me correctly,
he did it between some groups as well.

Nik has played before with The Moor on their second CD "Flux" but never
live with them so this was really exciting. The Moor is perhaps not so
much spacerock but more technoprog a´la King Crimson (another
favourite-group). The group does HW-covers usually and "Angels of death"
was on their debut-CD "Every pixel sells a story".
The show starts with "Suck", a heavy and melodic track with lots of
keyboards.It reminds me of early KC around 74-75 (a golden period).
Chainsaw-guitars and a tight rhytm-section provides a wall of sound.
Over to a Nik-track called "Watching the grass grow", usually not one of
my faves but this version is really good, less Nik and more Moor!?!


Time for Knut to enter the stage and read "in the egg" which he does
perfect I think. It can´t be easy to try this sort of thing, I mean Bob
was a great poet abut it seems like the audience did like it very much.
Next track by The Moor was "Soon" with a lovely mellotron-intro (Kenneth
is one of the guys still using this ancient instrument and thank God for
that!), and I can almost feel tears in my eyes. It´s so damn beautiful
with mellotron. As usual very dark lyrics read or sung by Hans Möll with
his deep voice, is this the reason why he´s using a headlamp?
Now over to the Nik-part of this show with our Uncle using stageclothes
which looks like a jokers dress. They starts with "the pyramid-spell"
which is performed with lots of feeling and this creates a special
atmosphere on the festival-area and people are just standing quiet and
enjoying the magic from the ancient Egypt. The magic is continuing with
more Nik songs - "Anubis", "Thoth", "Osiris"and "God rock". These songs
suits perfectly for live-performances it seems.


 I can imagine how it would be like if Nik was a man with financial
backup by some rich record-company.
Knut is entering the stage again and this time we can enjoy his reading
in "fly on the screen", and of course, he does it brilliant again, lots
of practice before or a natural talent? It was a smart move to add
poetry in the show, it gives more value for the money so to speak.
Next it´s The Moor again with "Consider death" from their first CD. The
opening is heavy with guitar, bass and drums, they do have a special
sound these guys!
The lyrics are once again very dark and worth considering as most of
them or perhaps all of them?
Rhytmic and yet heavy songs played with lots of energy by skilled
musicians.
Time for their last track this time and it´s "night&day", another heavy
song (a trademark of the Moor) combining progstyle keyboards with heavy
ROCK.

This time there´s a long pause since Bedouin got so much gear and the
roadies are working intensive to get it all together (I think!).
I got the chance to talk to Alan, Shawn and Danny about music in general
and their new group. Nice and friendly guys indeed.
Their set started about two hours later than expected but anyway and
they opened with "Never comedown" from his first solo-CD. The sound was
great and these guys can rock your socks off! Next was some new tracks
from the 12" single "Rock palace", "Wadi Dhar", "Passion is an animal"
and "Al Hadan" followed by some track I can´t remember (to much
Astra-beer). What I do remember is that they sound like a crossing
between Hawkwind and Motörhead (a psychedelic version of Motörhead if
you like). Very well played, hard as a rock and fast. The trouble is
that I´ve heard it all before but then again, I do like it, perhaps my
expectations where to high this time, I don´t know?
Unfortunately we (me and my wife) got very tired and went to the hotel
before the show was over but I think I know what to expect from them in
the future.

On Sunday we ate breakfast, left the hotel and went to Hamburg and time
for us being tourists for the rest of the day (train-departure 5.30 pm
from the Hauptbahnhof).

Although it did cost us a lot of money it was worth every DM to visit
Hamburg and the festival. The germans did a great job and all the fans
and musicians where nice, no trouble at all. We will probably go to
these kind of festivals more often in the future and especially if we
get the chance to meet fans from other countries as well.
Hope they do this again another year (I´m sure they do!) Next festival
is the prog-rock festival in Stockholm 29-31/8, I´m really looking
forward to it.

Peace, love & happiness from Sweden

Henrik

--
==========================================================

"Hallucinations flash by my eyes. I see images of strange far away
places.
New chocking technology and civilations based on astral magic."

>From "Astral magic" by Dark Sun

Henrik Hallgren, Stapelvägen 5, 856 34 Sundsvall, Sweden

Email: henrik.hallgren at sundsvall.mail.telia.com  /
henrik.hallgren at ortv.sca.se

Fax +46 (0)70 6101310  / Phone +46 (0)60 173716