OFF: style of Hillage music?

[K Henderson]

Alice is in Wonderland...

>What is the style of Steve Hillage solo works?
>
>I'm listening to "L" now and for me it's pure Space Rock.

'L' was (I think) his third solo album following 'Fish Rising' and 'Green'
IIRC.  It's the only one where he collaborated with Todd Rundgren's Utopia,
so it has a little different sound for that reason.  So you will find
there's a big variety in his solo music, even though it all came from a
fairly small window of time, c. 1975-81, and then from then on he went
headlong into the electronic/techno realm.

'Fish Rising' featured much of Gong, and is a great album IMHO, a better and
perhaps even truer album to the Trilogy Gong ethic than Shamal.

'Green' is very earthy and full of warm synthetic sounds and heaps of the
old vocoder trick.  Miquette does a lot of the space whispery vocals here.
Cheesy at times, but that was the thing at the time....cheese was in vogue.

'L' was his most popular solo release I think, and had some very eastern
flavors (a nod or two to George Harrison RIP).  And a companion piece of
sorts to an earlier one on Fish Rising...Lunar Musick Suite to Solar Musick
Suite, whichever way they went I can't remember.

Oh, let's see, next might have been...

'Motivation Radio' is the album where his fuzz guitar sound got a little too
over-fuzzed and 'pinchy', and that clashed a little with the hippy-folk
aspect of many of the tracks IMHO.

'Open' is probably next, and went way over to the jazz-funk sort of style.
So another Cheese alert there too...but I kinda like some of this stuff
anyway.  Christian Boule's solo work (from this same time) is rather
similar, as was contemporary Kraan.

I'm not sure when 'Live Herald' was released, but it was probably recorded
around the 'Motivation Radio' period (several concerts mixed together I
believe), and is a very good document of Steve's music in a much more
rock-out style.

That was three sides live, with a fourth side (five tracks?) that was
apparently an aborted full-album, that also appeared elsewhere on a LP (with
other tracks from earlier albums) called 'Aura.'  In the CD age, the three
live sides of 'Live Herald' went onto one CD by itself, and the studio
tracks go by the name 'Studio Herald' and are slapped onto the end of one of
the other CDs, 'Open' I believe.  This stuff is rather like a mixture of
'Green' and 'Open.'  Electronic-jazz-funk stuff.  Not his greatest material.
I think somewhere here is his 'Glorious Om Riff' which is Gong's "Master
Builder" in disguise.  I think he does it live on 'Live Herald' as well.

So we're around 1979, and 'Rainbow Dome Musick' is from about then, which
was a pair of full-side ambient works that paralleled some of the things
that Cyrille Verdeaux and his other friends on the Clearlight-side of the
Gong Family tree were doing (Steve appeared on Clearlight Symphony with
Blake et al. I think).  Some it RDM gets a little too minimalist for me,
though I haven't heard it in AGES as I only have the LP.

Jump to '81-'82, and we get his last solo work entitled 'For to Next' and
'And Not Or', two LPs that were companion pieces and were sold together as
one package.  (Today, both on one CD.)  Um, this is *really* hit and miss,
with quite a few misses.  I think it was pretty much all Steve & Miquette
and programmed bass/drums - and of course, soon thereafter 'rock' music was
a thing of the past for Steve.  'And Not Or' was all-instrumental and has
some nice moments of guitar-synth playing.  'For to Next' is mainly
electronic-pop tunes with a few major stinkers.  But then songs like "Alone"
are among Steve's best pop songs and I like his singing voice a lot on this
track.  But overall, a huge Cheese alert here too!  If you didn't hear it
when it was new, it will sound horribly dated and silly I'm guessing.  Cue
the 80s discussion again.  :)

As has been mentioned, Hillage then went into the electronic/dance community
never to re-emerge.  System7 (or 777 in the US) is his main project, but he
works with other entities like The Orb and others.  He's also done some
producing, for instance the Cumbrian pop-prog-rock band It Bites of one
Frank Dunnery.  System7 is virtually all boring techno music, though the
two-disc System7.3 'Fire and Water' package is half-interesting.  The 'Fire'
disc is techno-style versions of six or seven musical motifs.  Then the
'Water' disc is laid back spacey ambient versions of the same motifs, with
lots of his signature 'whale-guitar' sounds.  It's quite nice...the 'Fire'
disc is just annoying.

Well, that's it.

Grakkl (FAA)

P.S.  The song 'Electrick Gypsies' (I think it was) appeared breifly in the
Young Ones episode when Neil becomes a Pig and cuts off half of his hair.
"Oh, Wow...Steve Hillage."