They Went In Search Of Space
“Space rock is all about the whoosh.”
As discerning music listeners often note, defining genres is a rather dangerous game.
Luckily space rock is the exception that proves the rule because it is so easily summed up: space rock is all about the whoosh.
The exact birth of space rock is impossible to pinpoint, but Pink Floyd’s Interstellar Overdrive is as good a marker as any. Where rock music had certainly touched upon notions of space travel, from The Tornados’ Telstar [Not to mention their producer Joe Meek’s groundbreaking 1960 space concept album I Hear A New World – Ed] to Bowie’s Space Oddity, it had yet to convincingly replicate the actual feel of space travel. Thanks to Syd Barrett’s ragged, jammed-out epic from The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn, listeners were unexpectedly transported to the cockpit of some unfathomable, futuristic craft and propelled at great speed into the dark depths of the cosmos. Or, at least, that’s probably what it felt like if you were suitably medicated. In that moment, the whoosh was activated.
Two years later, of course, Hawkwind formed in Ladbroke Grove, London, and swiftly became the benchmark against which all future space beats; the otherworldly swoops and sparkles of analogue synthesisers; the unashamedly whacked-out and whimsical lyrics; bursts of honking, disembodied sax. Hawkwind were space rock incarnate, and their 1973 live double album remains ultimate, defining expression of the genre’s essence. Listen to the fleshed-out and freewheeling versions of and . There’s the , in full effect.
