Hawkwind
Space Ritual 50th Anniversary Edition
ATOMHENGE
1973: A Space Odyssey.
While rummaging the other day, I found an ancient piece of paraphernalia produced by something called the Trustees Of Hawkwind. (As I type, would you believe that just defaulted to ‘Hawkweed’?!) It’s a flyer produced on a now long-defunct Gestetner duplicating machine: a yellowed promo for Hawkwind merch. The prices are insane – aSpace Ritual T-shirt is £1.10 plus 15p p&p. The sizes are S, M and L (no XL or XXL for the slender space-rangers of the 70s). Judging by my mathematical scribblings (1.10 + 15 = 1.25) and the clipped-out order form, it looks like I sent off for a shirt. I must’ve been the coolest kid on the cosmic block.
An unfeasible 50 years down the line, Space Ritual still sounds magnificent. Originally a double live LP with a stunning fold-out Barney Bubbles sleeve, it was recorded on Hawkwind’s UK tour of December 1972, following the release of studio album Doremi Faso Latido. A continuous performance linked by stellar stanzas from Robert Calvert (sometimes Michael Moorcock), this was an atom-smashing audio-visual orgasm, enhanced by a swirling-dervish light show from Liquid Len and ‘exotic dancing’ by Stacia Blake and her pendulous friends. (‘Brain Damage To Go,’ an advert proclaimed, accurately, at the time.)
‘Ritual’ is key. This isn’t an opera or a recital. It’s a ceremony, a liturgy… a pagan love feast, if you like. Cosmic jive at its haziest and hippiest, happening in a Galactic Empire far, far away.
Hawkwind’s musicnauts were remarkable at this time. Dave Brock’s guitar was dense, grinding, thick as molasses. Lemmy’s bass grumbled and rumbled as only his could. Futuristic electronic squeaks by Del Dettmar and DikMik were the equivalent of rats scrabbling in the cellar. Nik Turner’s sax wailed despairingly, like a moonwalker tumbling into infinity. And Calvert/ Moorcock’s Asimov-style musings were the icing on the visor of that hapless moonwalker: ‘Space is dark it’s so endless/ When you’re lost it’s so relentless…’
This box set comprises 11 discs, which some might say is over-egging the interplanetary pudding. But no. There are many twists and turns. The songs might be repeated, but they’re never the same. The original album has been newly remastered; there’s a surround-sound fandango; there are fresh mixes of gigs at Liverpool, Sunderland and London … it goes on. This is a peerless celebration of Hawkwind’s defining masterpiece – and there ain’t even a sniff of Silver Machine.
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Geoff Barton
Tom Waits
Reissues UNIVERSAL
This is where Tom got his rep.
Before 1983’s (9/10), Tom Waits had released seven wonderful albums of bluesy/boozy pianoled folk ballads, but it was here that he cut loose and began his real career as a sound sculptor, delving deep into wildly inventive and eccentric territory, fuelled by a confidence given by meeting his future wife and creative foil Kathleen Brennan. His record labelthrough the free-form barroom soliloquy and sparse ballad it’s hard to know what to enjoy most – the magical lilting lyricism, the haunting melodies, or Waits’s wild but never random musical inventiveness. said it was the second-greatest album of all time. Most days that’s kinda hard to argue with.
