HW: Brock Interview - Star One

[Jonathan Jarrett]

On Fri, Jun 07, 2002 at 12:22:45PM -0400, Chris Raymond typed out:
> Heard the Dave Brock interview from totalrock that played last week. Real
> interesting. He said that Huw had an injured elbow and was not able to
> contribute much guitar playing to the new album. Also that Mike Moorcock is
> doing some spoken word pieces.

        That's not good news about Huw. On the other hand, it suggests
that they're keen on getting it done quickly because otherwise presumably
he'd have time to heal up. Hope he'll be all right by mid-next month. Good
to hear Moorcock's cool not that Doug Smith is out of the picture,
although I still don't think Marion is exactly a full substitute (and
somebody's *got* to buy Doug's portion of EBS... ) But anyway.

> They played the Hawkwind medley that Dave sang on for that Star One cd. It
> sounded really good. I would like to hear the rest of the disc. If the rest
> of the cd is anywhere as good as the medley, then it is probably fantastic.
> Has anyone heard the whole disc?

        Yes. The medley's different to the rest in terms of, I don't know,
it has more grit and less pretention, though not much less. There's a
forgettable version of `Space Oddity' on the bonus disc too but otherwise
it's pretty consistent, overblown power metal with masses of synth
content. Most of the instruments are by the boy Arjen, who can't play as
well as he thinks he can, I think, but there are some guest soloists who
turn out plenty of yer power-metal widdling, including synth-guitar duels
and stuff like that. Terribly terribly I-would-love-to-think-it's-tongue-
in-cheek-but-I-don't-think-it-is. Like Rainbow with the teeth removed and
extra hair. But no, hang on, I'm not being quite fair. Once you allow for
the fact that it's decidedly operatic in aspiration and that though Arjen
may think it's heavy I own some Electric Wizard albums that cause me to
differ from him on this, it's (hush, look the other way) actually quite
*good* in places. Some effective use of harmonies, some quite good pieces
of music, lyrics not always terrible (I mean, they beat John Shirley's but
you can tell Arjen doesn't have a very good grasp of what's a hideous
cliche or skull-numbingly naif), and of course there's the fun of working
out what films he's using. It's by and large obvious if you've seen them
and in some cases even if you haven't, which means that if like me you
hadn't seen any Blake's Seven you must avoid hearing the lyrics so as not
to have the plot entirely exposed to you.

        So, yes, it's terribly cheesy but I can't actually slag it off as
fully as my sense of taste tells me I should because parts of it are
really quite fun. The packaging is gorgeous. The music manages to stick in
my brain so I can't say it's forgettable. The medley is lots of fun, but
the actual album is no disgrace even if it's no _Imaginos_ either. Just
ensure you have your poodle-metal sensors turned right down before
listening... Yours,
                    Jon

ObCD: DarXtar - _Daybreak_
--
        Jonathan Jarrett                Birkbeck College, London
                 jjarrett at chiark.greenend.org.uk
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  "The large print giveth and the small print taketh away." (Tom Waits)