HW: Re: Hawkwind Onward

[Lucidsounds]

Albert Dryden.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Horse" <horse at DARKSTAR.UK.NET>
To: <BOC-L at LISTSERV.ISPNETINC.NET>
Sent: Saturday, August 11, 2012 8:50 PM
Subject: Re: HW: Re: Hawkwind Onward


> Does anyone out there remember the name of the guy that inspired the 
> lyrics to 'Right To Decide'? I think he shot a council member over some 
> planning permission incident.
> I seem to remember that the band got a lot of stick for supporting him 
> when they issued it the first time round.
>
> Cheers
>
> Horse
>
>
> On 11/08/2012 15:57, Jonathan Jarrett wrote:
>> On Wed, 9 May 2012, SHLL (Scott Heller) wrote:
>>> I am really surprised that there has been no discussion of the new 
>>> Hawkwind record. I still don't have mine but some of you out there must 
>>> have it by now... What do people think compared to Blood of the Earth?? 
>>> Has anyone heard the vinyl? They did a terrible job on the mastering of 
>>> the vinyl on the last one, sound was very muddy (way too much low end) 
>>> compared to the CD sound. Hope they sort this one out. I have not bought 
>>> the vinyl yet as I don't listen to the last one on vinyl due to the 
>>> sound issues.
>>>
>>> Anyway, I really look forward to hearing it and digging into the 
>>> songs...
>>
>> I actually only got hold of this album in the last couple of weeks, which 
>> is a bit poor for a fan I know. I'd been much encouraged by the two 
>> tracks I'd heard on Aural Innovations webcasts, and I now realise that in 
>> some ways those were the two tracks I was most likely to like (`Seasons' 
>> and the hidden track). But I've given it several spins now--I got the 
>> expanded edition--and have some opinions, if anyone wants 'em. Overall, 
>> though, my current verdict is that I actually like this album better than 
>> _Blood of the Earth_ but can't easily explain why since I think the 
>> production is unhelpfully dense and that there are fewer stand-
>> out tracks. It just seems like a coherent piece of work by a band that 
>> knew what it was after. That, also, seems strange when one looks at who 
>> was on the tracks and realises that, for example, Tim Blake's hardly 
>> there outside the tracks he wrote parts for, Dibs only gets two writing 
>> credits even though he seems omni-present and there's a sizeable part of 
>> the album which is all-or-mostly-Dave and which doesn't sound radically 
>> different to the rest even so. So my first impression was that this seems 
>> like a genuinely active and coherent band, and that looking as it to see 
>> whether or not this is `proper Hawkwind' or not is not going to be the 
>> right way to listen to it. It's obviously what the band called Hawkwind 
>> is doing now.
>>
>> So, track-by-track? `Seasons' is to my ear mainly Dibs's work but Richard 
>> actually gets lead credit so what do I know? Intense, fast and hostile; 
>> the dense production actually an advantage here, and definitely a 
>> highlight that makes one eager to hear more.
>>
>> `The Hills Have Ears'--a doomful Gaia-hypothesis prophecy on which Niall 
>> gets lead credit, in which case he should do that more often. The words 
>> aren't great but contain a Chrome reference, unexpected but pleasing. On 
>> the whole this is no drop in quality from the beginning.
>>
>> `Mind Cut'--all Brock, words music and playing, and none too bad but 
>> neither is it stand-out among his work. We've kind of heard this before, 
>> and the words are rather basic. (I care about this more as I get older.)
>>
>> `System Check'--a `Psychosis'-style spaceship radio exchange, in which 
>> Tim massively over-acts compared to the rest of the crew, bless him. 
>> Entertaining filler.
>>
>> `Death Trap'--retread, obviously, but really quite good, up with the 
>> _Alien4_ version as a justifiable rework and identifiably, as I say, a 
>> different band; this is the point at which I came to the realisation 
>> about this line-up's coherence that I set out above.
>>
>> `Southern Cross'--Tim's track, but it sounds like a Hawkwind one all the 
>> same, and better-than-entertaining instrumental filler.
>>
>> `Prophecy'--Brock track with only him, Niall and Richard on the 
>> recording. Again lyrics not the strong point but reasonably mantric, 
>> which forgives that a bit; all the same this isn't a high point.
>>
>> `Electric Tears'/`Drive By'--technically two tracks but I can't detect 
>> the separation between them without watching the CD player's display, 
>> despite the fact that the line-ups differ, first being just date and the 
>> latter being the trio from `Prophecy' again. The bit I think of as `Drive 
>> By' is a bit like `Taxi for Max' would have been if they'd stopped and 
>> completely rethought how to do something fun in that general frame. 
>> There's more thought generally in this pair than most of Hawkwind's synth 
>> interludes but they're very short.
>>
>> `Computer Cowards'--just Dave and Richard, and the lyrics uniquely not 
>> given in the sleeve. They're not hard to figure out: Dave doesn't like 
>> people sniping on the Internet and wishes them an evil fate. Hi Dave! 
>> It's in the vein of `Behind the Face' from _Spacebrock_ or `Comfy Chair' 
>> but darker, meaner and more musically repetitive, not that I mean that in 
>> a bad way. This is Dave's dark side coming out!
>>
>> `Howling Moon'--Brock solo and I've not really anything major to say 
>> about it. Probably the least impressive piece of music on the discs.
>>
>> `Right to Decide'--a bonus track, and well, yes, it's about the same as 
>> ever it was but with the sound of this new line-up, except in as much as 
>> it's the 2008 line-up with Jason Stuart also aboard. I quite liked Jason 
>> live but here the plinkety piano adds something dangerously like Rockney 
>> to the feel of things, something I think only `Brainbox Pollution' really 
>> copes with in the Hawkwind catalogue. Still a good song but rightly 
>> relegated to bonus-ville here.
>>
>> `Aerospaceage Inferno'--another bonus with that same line-up, and here 
>> again I don't find the piano much of a bonus. The lyrics are printed 
>> here, for some reason, whereas none of the other songs from before get 
>> this privilege; there's also a middle-eight poem from Dibs, or at least 
>> he recites it and it has his general flavour, about a bad re-entry by a 
>> spacecraft, which reads quite lamely on the page but which works very 
>> well in the setting of the bigger track, and definitely adds something. 
>> It's a good version but still, plinkety-plink, I can't look back on that 
>> as a good idea however good Jason was at it.
>>
>> `The Flowering of the Rose'--instrumental jam by the 2008 line-up again, 
>> and this one quite fun, think `Flight to Maputo' or `Going to Hawaii' or 
>> `Only Time Will Tell' but with a bit more going on that's melodic. I'm 
>> glad to have got this in the package.
>>
>> `Trans Air Trucking'--a Brock-Blake joint effort, with only them playing, 
>> Tim on bass as well as keys, and instrumental. I was hoping for a bit 
>> more life and bounce from it given the title, I'd kind of like to see the 
>> title taken off it and saved for something else as there isn't so much 
>> going on here. Pleasant enough!
>>
>> `Deep Vents'--Brock solo piece, but weirdly like one of Alan's pieces 
>> from the early nineties. Could have done with being longer! I like these 
>> noises and would cheerfully have had more of them.
>>
>> `Green Finned Demon'--the Brock-Hone-Chadwick trio here and a perfectly 
>> good version, but it's hard to say it really adds anything to the song 
>> that we didn't have in other versions. By the end of this album it's hard 
>> not to think that they powered it out so quickly that they couldn't come 
>> up with enough conventional songs so resorted to retreads to space out 
>> the synth work and poems.
>>
>> And then there's the hidden track, whose name I would like to know 
>> because it's really quite good, lyrics not unlike `Blood of the Earth' 
>> and ploughing the same kind of high-octane apocalypticism as `Seasons' at 
>> the beginning. I suspect Dibs and Niall of being to the fore on this one, 
>> and in general I don't understand why this one's a secret, it should be a 
>> matter for pride. Excellent closer.
>>
>> So, there's some filler I think and I question the need for two retreads 
>> (in fact I question the need for one but the `Death Trap' is so good I 
>> will forgive it) but I'm very happy to have them still active and 
>> *sounding like a band*. If they turned out another of this standard in 
>> eighteen months that would be a cause for celebration I reckon. So, there 
>> you go Scott, some thoughts :-) Yours all,
>> Jon
>>
>
> -- 
>
> "Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production 
> deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid."
> — Frank Zappa