Tee Pee Records and an Alarming Experience...

So I was completely foxed, ok? There I was, leaving a breakfast network meeting on Thursday morning and driving along the sea front at Falmouth with bright sunshine glistening off the bright blue sea and I hear my car alarm start to blare at me. Well, I’ve done really well with my latest E-Bay bargain, my second Mazda MX-6 but, bless it, it’s getting on a bit so I pull over to investigate only to discover that it’s nothing to do with my car but is actually part of the intro to track six of the new Hopewell album, Good Good Desperation. You got me, guys. On your way with you please.

I’d picked on that one from a particularly interesting PR sheet that landed in my inbox a few days ago and I’ll be writing it up in a future R2 (formerly Rock N Reel) so again not one for commenting on here at the moment in anything other than the broadest of terms but just to quote from the press sheet, this is what got me excited about this album and I wasn’t disappointed: “Purveyors of the new psych-rock scene, Hopewell has been blending vintage fuzz pedal jams with their early space rock and shoegaze roots for over a decade, their 2001 full-length, The Curved Glass, being the perfect, noisy bridge between the epic psychedelia of ‘90s acts like Flaming Lips and Mercury Rev and a newer generation of bands that include Dungen, Dead Meadow and Serena Maneesh. Now back with their sixth album, ‘Good Good Desperation’ effortlessly slips from cacophonous dueling piano passages, à la Stravinsky, to the Hammond-driven roots rock of ‘The Basement Tapes’, while creating something uniquely its own. From the opening vocal harmonies of "Preamble," which takes cues from the classical compositions of Bach and Debussy, to the CAN-inspired two-drummer tribal attack of "Island," listeners are confronted with expansive sonic images of a band's travels and conflicts. Good Good Desperation inhabits a world where The Album is not a lost art, and invites listeners on a journey from dirty downtown New York City scenes to blissful Californian deserts.”

I’m really impressed with Tee Pee Records who have released the Hopewell album. I received their Earthless live album last year, captured at the Roadburn festival, and reviewed here and in Rock N Reel a while back, and I’ll also note their release of The Atomic Bitchwax album Tab 4, which I haven’t heard yet but which includes Bob Pantella from Monster Magnet, and Assemble Head, When Sweet Sleep Returned, noted as being “a soundtrack for days and futures bright and bleak.” A label to watch.

My friends Rob and Anne-Marie at Voiceprint have been sending me over a plethora of (very welcome) review material recently and though at the moment I’m not sure what will be appearing in the mainstream press and what will be in review here, I’ll note their release of Our Best Trips by Don Falcone’s Spirits Burning as being of special interest to blog followers. Selecting tracks across SB’s output must have been quite a challenge for Don, given the variety and depth of material available to chose from, but his broad-church view of spacerock is well represented in the selections and features notables such as Porcupine Tree main man Steve Wilson, the always enchanting Daevid Allen, his multitude of Hawkwind contacts and many more key genre figures. VP also kindly sent me a copy of Matt Malley (ex-Counting Crows) solo album The Goddess Within, which has been in the car CD player regularly this week and which, though it’s off-topic for the blog’s original intent, is one that I’ll be writing up here if not in the music press. I’ve also received a copy of the Robert Calvert double-CD, Robert Calvert and Maximum Effect Live at the Stars and Stripes, with accompanying pre-tour demos. Now, I know this show is also released as a different version, direct from the band, so there’s a little bit of contention doing the rounds of the forums at the moment but I’ll have a listen and report back.

Voiceprint have received released a DVD of Hawkwind, Roy Harper and Here & Now from the Stonehenge Festival of 1984, complete with extensive ‘making of’ booklet by director Al Stokes. I’ve review this in the latest issue of Record Collector, but it’s worth noting here that this is not the same source as the Jettizound video that most will be aware of and the visuals, from a totally different source, are superior to those seen before. I’m also reviewing the latest set of Hawkwind reissues (Quark, PXR5 and Live 79) there, as well as a live Magazine compilation and the second volume of Daevid Allen’s Gong Dreaming memoirs (SAF Publishing, due imminently).

A word on the Hawklords front, I spoke with Nik Turner this week and he was hopeful that the disappointments of the cancelled Roundhouse gigs would be soon put aside and a late September (I hear Sunday, 20th September) date in London would be confirmed. Seems like there’s a new HawklordsZoo myspace page established as well – I really hope this guys can get this project to run as there’s most definitely a place for what they want to do within the spacerock scene and it’s too good a line-up to not get something going.

Tee Pee Records

SAF Publishing

Voiceprint Records

Nigel Mazlyn Jones - Sentinel

I’ve commented before how both Bridget and I have identified one of the great things about doing our Festivals book has been the fascinating characters that we’ve encountered on our journey through the history of free festivals. I’d highlight here a particular instance where we’ve received encouragement and support from a free festival regular, who has brought a lot of value to the project and that is in our contact with Nigel Mazlyn Jones. I’ve been lucky to meet Nigel on a couple of occasions, most recently in the last week when I was able to visit him and not only chat festivals but spend an afternoon looking through his archive of festivals newsletters and associated ephemera. I came away enlightened and enthused about our project, and also clutching a number of Nigel’s CDs including Kissing Spell’s reissues of his seminal works, Ship To Shore and Sentinel; on a previous visit I’d also been kindly given a copy of Nigel’s Planet For Sale album, which is highly relevant to this blog and which I’ll write about in its own review at a future date.

Sentinel is the latest reissue of Nigel’s work from Kissing Spell and I’ll be reviewing it in the music press before the summer is over, so I’ll not comment about it in-depth here, but it was an opportunity, sitting around Nigel’s kitchen table with the warm Cornish sunshine brightening the day, to ask him about an album that he considers one of the pinnacle’s of his output.

“Sentinel was my second album,” Nigel explained to me. “Most of the material was written on the road in 1977/78, a few bits early in ‘79, and then the album was recorded and released in ‘79. I’d been a professional musician for eight years, my first album, Ship To Shore, had come out three years earlier. I was at the top of my game, because you tend to be at the top of your game when you’re in your twenties, as a musician on the road. My career was going up. I was being asked to support various famous names, because of Ship To Shore. I’d saved all the money off the first album, which was independent, put it into a better studio in Cheltenham, Dick Cadbury’s studio, who was the lead guitarist for Steve Hackett and various others. Dick played bass and some lead guitar on Sentinel, I had Johnny Coppin [on piano], the folk world all know Johnny Coppin, and I bumped into an engineer called John Acock, who used to work with Steve Hackett and was an acoustic expert.

“We were working on the world’s first production model of a SSL desk, which went on to become the name for recording desks. So it was great musicians, in a great studio, with great equipment, and there was a lot of care and attention towards my music from the great people who were working with me. There was a lot of commitment, a lot of camaraderie - as you only get in your youthful years - and I’d matured in my twenties as a song-writer and as an experienced musician travelling on the road. I look back on it now and I hear its technical quality is superb, by virtue of other people’s engineering and the playmanship of the other musicians, which was very sensitive to the material and the songs. Because they’d known me for a few years they all supported my writing and my ethics and stance, so the overall effect is that of a lot of very happy people and the synergy of that gave it some of its strength.

“Sentinel, as a solo musician, it was a band album in a way so it put me in a strange league in so far as the folkies weren’t too sure about it, because it was very electric and the rock world wasn’t too sure about it because it was a bit acoustic-ish. By then, the Fairport Convention, Steeleye Span thing were very much folk-roots-electric, so Sentinel fell into an odd bag and didn’t really get publicised or pushed so it never got masses of coverage but it seemed to strike a bell with my core fans who loved that sort of singer-songwriter thing. It’s been hailed through the years, lots of people say to me, “Oh, we love that album, it’s our favourite.” I’ve looked back on it over the last year when I’ve been selecting tracks [for the reissue] that didn’t make it onto that album. I mean, you couldn’t put everything on it because there was a time limit on vinyl of about seventy-minutes and most LPs would be forty or fifty minutes, which I still think is a good amount of time for any album. I’d demo’d every song in my home recording set-up in Port Isaac, not terribly professionally but pleasantly. When I was in the studio with those demos, so people could be rehearsing the next track’s harmonies, or whatever, the engineer heard them, said “That’s really good quality, let’s put it through the big monitors and listen to it and what a shame you didn’t put a bit more treble and clarity on it because we could have transferred the lovely vibe of your home recordings onto the main tapes and worked on those to maintain the vibe you’ve already got.” But out of the songs came a short-list and some got left, and the ones that got left were the ones where at the time, as a new parent, I kind of felt some of the writing was deeply personal to me and my family and friends and I felt rather protective about that and that they weren’t as suitable as other tracks to put out for public listening.

“What I’ve done, thirty years later, is searched those tracks out and found them in remarkably good condition, remastered and tidied them up, and selected my favourite six tracks that weren’t included from about ten or twelve tracks that didn’t make it. I picked them to actually do the opposite of what I was trying to do thirty years before; I picked those six tracks to demonstrate who I was, what I felt and what was around me in my life at the time. I feel braver about them now; they’re historical – and I probably feel a bit more confident about what I was espousing back then. Most of the values I was espousing thirty years ago, they’re still my values. There were some interesting downsides to it, it’s not particularly healthy, as people will know, to go intensely trawling through your life of thirty years ago and bring back anything you were worried about or angry about, things that were happening that were negative, that quantum leap of moving from your twenties to your thirties as though you’re leaving your youth behind. There are some issues in there, so I found it quite revealing, because I trawled through all my scribbles, my on the road writings, poetry and ideas that came flooding out in all those hours you have to yourself uncluttered by daily activities. It showed me where I thought I was at, what I hoped for... and of course that made me look at what didn’t work out, what dreams weren’t achieved. That brings up why they weren’t achieved and leaves you with some emotion; measuring where you are in your fifties by looking at where you were in your twenties is quite intense but all I can say is its very positive and therapeutic if you can handle the truth!

“I fell off the end of my career in my thirties, in 1980, the year after, because I wasn’t prepared to... I supported a huge, well-known, band on a European tour for three and a half months and I got sight of what the real rock industry was like and realised that it wasn’t for me to swim in without getting eaten alive or losing my heartfelt writing.

“I love Sentinel, it’s very buoyant, very technically accomplished; I’ve now been looking back, from reissuing it, and realising technical things about it that account for its pristine, crisp and transparent sound, so Sentinel has set the benchmark for my next recordings. But I’m really chuffed that it’s out. We went to a lot of trouble to find all the artwork that was done by Julian Russell, who did the Ship To Shore cover. We found lots of wonderful black and white photos that he’d done, so the reissue has a lot of previously unseen artwork and sleeve notes, and we went to a lot of trouble and effort to make it a seriously professional, respectful, good deal, rather than just sling it out. We’ve set the bar very high for future releases.”

Nigel Mazlyn Jones Official Website

NMJ Isle of Light Website

NMJ Downloads
NMJ on YouTube

Kissing Spell Records

Alan Davey - Eclectic Devils

I’m doing a little bit of publicity on Alan Davey’s latest solo album, watch out over the next few months for reviews that we’ve been promised in the mainstream music press. Here’s the PR blurb that I recently put together for the album:

“When asked, in Bass Guitar magazine, of his last solo album, Human on the Outside, “What’s on the inside?” Alan Davey, former Hawkwind bassist, simply responded, “Its eclectic.” Since then, he’s enjoyed acclaim for his regeneration of early 80s Metal outfit Gunslinger, issued four CDs of tracks from his collection of demo recordings under the umbrella-title Four-Track Mind and now releases a new solo album that also promises a deliciously diverse selection of material: Eclectic Devils.

Always in search of the interesting collaboration (watch for his ‘Egyptian’ album, recorded with one-time Hawkwind band-mate Bridget Wishart), Davey has rounded-up some highly regarded contributors for this new album. Having played with Simon House (Hawkwind, High Tide, Bowie, Japan) during one of House’s irregular stints with the Hawks, there’s a great sense of symmetry when House plays on four of Eclectic Devils' ten tracks. With House’s classically-trained violin weaving and soaring across numbers like the driving opener ‘Angel Down’ and the dense and dirty instrumental ‘Waste of Space’, and juxtaposed with Davey’s trademark heavy bass lines, there’s a strong link back to classic 70s Hawkwind: Hall of the Mountain Grill and Warrior on the Edge of Time. That’s not to say that there’s a 70s time warp amidst the album’s swirling vortex of sound – Davey knows very well how to take inspiration from the past without ever failing to deliver a very 21st Century makeover. Long-time Hawkwind fans might nod approvingly at his reverence but won’t fail to recognise that Davey has a totally contemporary space-rock sound.

Elsewhere on Eclectic Devils, Davey pushes at his own boundaries with impunity; songs like ‘Encounter’ (with lyrics and achingly-beautiful vocals by Isobel Morris of festival-favourites Bruise) have a sureness of touch which demonstrates that it might be twenty-five years since Davey first burst into recognition by joining Hawkwind at the fabled 1984 Stonehenge Free Festival, but he’s never stopped looking to develop and refine his craft. ‘Encounter’, with its brooding structure, delicious lead-guitar and overwhelming sense of place and atmosphere hints at new directions and is quite possibly one of the best things Davey has done in his career so far. ‘Too High’ and ‘Ya Know Ya Should’ thematically follow-up ‘World of Fear’ and ‘Delusions of Ganja’ (from Human on the Outside) – you’ve got to keep a clear head to take on ‘The Man’.

Davey’s own path is made very clear in Eclectic Devils; he’s having a ball with his creative freedom!”

I think one of the things that’s so good about this latest Alan Davey CD is that where Human on the Outside was wide-ranging in its ambitions, perhaps not unnaturally given that Alan at the time was coming out of a long association with Hawkwind and enjoying the chance to highlight different aspects of his craft, Eclectic Devils has a little bit more focus. Now, it’s still quite right to say, as I have above, that Alan’s “having a ball with his creative freedom”, but where his last CD had a bit of everything gathered into it, for this one he’s spent additional time thinking through what he wants to achieve and the type of approach the tracks should take.

Some might miss the instrumental synthesiser-wash that he’d got a tad pigeon-holed into with Hawkwind (‘Blue Shift’, ‘Out Here We Are’) but what I’m hearing is someone refining his song-writing skills. He’s had some assistance... I’m really not overstating my case when I note that the Isobel Morris co-write ‘Encounter’ is one of his best tracks not just here but throughout his solo and Hawkwind career, in fact it’s the emotional heart of the collection. But there’s clarity of purpose to the whole which delivers a highly satisfying cohesiveness and elevates this album right up to the heights of Alan’s catalogue.

If you are a reviewer and are interested in covering this album in the music press or via high-traffic web presence, do please drop me an e-mail via my profile page.

Alan Davey Myspace

Alan Davey Official Website

Psi Corps - "Tekeli-li"

Here’s the second CD in recent months from Alisa Coral and Michael Blackman and, following on from the extreme metal of Space Mirror’s Majestic 12, they’re off at another tangent in this collection of cinematic instrumentals under the name Psi-Corps. And like other discs reviewed here recently, they’ve taken literary influences to shape their musical ambitions. For “Tekeli-li” is an aural representation of Edgar Allan Poe’s South Pole novel The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, a controversial entry from Poe’s canon originally published in 1838. Now, at this point I’ll confess to not having read this particular work but have certainly become intrigued by reading up on the Internet on the various theories and speculations regarding this fantastical tale that the entry-writer at Wikipedia describes as a ‘fairly conventional adventure at sea’ but which ‘becomes increasingly strange and hard to classify’.

So that’s another entry on my ‘to investigate’ list and I mention it as an aside to reviewing this highly accomplished and very well imagined suite of composition. But it’s right to note that the success of an artistic endeavour that sets out to take a narrative or an impression from one medium and transplant it as a personal reflection in another can often be summed up by how well it sends the, in this instance, listener, off to the source. So I can’t evaluate, for the moment, how well these soundscapes reflect the material from which they were dreamed, but on a level of how well the album works in creating an interest in where it originally sprang from, I’ll judge it a success.

Whilst Space Mirrors sees Alisa and Michael working across the ether with a range of notable musicians, here their two-way Internet collaborations remain strictly between themselves, with Michael contributing his fluid guitar-work across Alisa’s range of synthesizers, theremin, bass and drums. This leads to a compactness of sound in one respect, so whilst the tracks are extended and seem to shift their moods on whim there’s an organisation to the composing that suggest a considered, almost plotted, structure to the music that again falls in-line with this being a literary adaptation.

In this instance, then, I’m going to do something I’ve not done before and that’s to simply note here that this is a clever and complex collection of recordings, absorbing and multi-faceted and well-worth investigation – and revisit this review in a few weeks once I’ve had a chance to read Poe’s book and properly understand what this music is reflecting. Then I’ll post a little more here on it, which hopefully will embrace how well its six-tracks, starting with Pym’s departure, through his sea voyaging to the land of Tsalal and eventually to the Hollow Earth, realise the source narrative. Which should be an interesting voyage in and of itself.

Psi Corps Myspace

RAIG Website

A G Pym at Wikipedia

New Stuff at Spacerock Heights

If this blog has been a little quiet lately, then the volume of new music coming through the letterbox at Spacerock Heights has been anything but! I’m going to try and catch up some stuff over the long Bank Holiday weekend, still grinning from recently being labelled ‘The Man’ by Earthling Society’s Fred Laird over on Julian Cope’s Head Heritage Forum when this blog got very kindly plugged there. And thanks and hello to the thirty-odd visitors that have followed the link and visited (see I read my analytics).

Talking about Earthling Society, their follow-up to last year’s Beauty and the Beast album is out in July but I’ve been lucky enough to receive a promo from the ever excellent 4 Zero Records which I’ll be reviewing elsewhere this summer. It’s safe to say, though, that this album, with its fixation on such 60s dark Americana as Charles Manson, CIA mind control experiments and project MK-ULTRA is destined to go down a storm in Spacerock circles.

As, indeed, judging by the feedback on the Internet from their recent preview gig in Walthamstow, is the imminent third album by Litmus of which a review should be appearing here in the next few weeks. Released by Rise Above Records, as was their stellar Planetfall a couple of years back, this will undoubtedly be one to watch out for. Keep an eye out also over the summer for the second Spirits Burning with Bridget Wishart CD, Bloodlines, due from Voiceprint. I’ve heard some of the tracks in development over the last few months and it sounds to me that if you liked their first offering, Earth Born, then you’ll be blown away with this one.

Talking about being blown away, I had some e-mails with Alisa Coral of Space Mirrors (recently reviewed here) recently, where Alisa kindly told me that the reason she’d decided on Space Mirrors as a name for her band was from a suggestion I’d made in an e-mail exchange a few years back... which was rather thrilling news actually! Alisa kindly sent over another new CD that’s she’s had released, this time through the exciting RAIG label from Russia, like the new Space Mirrors this is a concept album. This time Alisa and Michael Blackman performing as Psi Corps have composed a collection of music based on the works of Edgar Allen Poe, “Tekeli-li”, which I’ll be scheduling to post a review of in the next few days. Alisa has also been producing the Russian Spacerock band Vespero who also have some albums out on RAIG and I’m hoping to be reviewing some of their work in the near future. One more cheer for RAIG who have also recently issued the new Sendelia album, The Girl From The Future Who Lit Up The Sky With Golden Worlds. I won’t be reviewing that one here, because I’ve placed a review in one of the magazines I write for, but there will be an interview with Pete from Sendelica appearing here as soon as I’ve got the questions sorted out and sent over (Pete, thanks for your patience!). Another great release for fans (like me!) of trippy, Kraut-influenced Spacerock, so please do check it out!

Talking of getting Spacerock to the masses, the latest Rock N Reel magazine has now appeared, rebranded as R2 if you’re hunting the shelves of WH Smith for it (I hope you are, please support independent music press!), and I’m delighted to say has my review of Serpentina Satelite’s Nothing to Say album (released on German label Trip in Time). Always great to get a bit of extra exposure for the genre and its musicians! Away from the Spacerock scene, I’m also reviewing releases by The Sensational Alex Harvey Band, Joe Jackson, and Bish, and supporting the Bish review with an interview with main-man Darryl Hunt (also of The Pogues) in the current R2.

And with that round-up of all-things Spacerock landing on my doorstep in the last couple of weeks, I’m off to enjoy a well-earned Vodka Martini (made with Absolut of course), and dip into Helter Skelter’s latest title, Paul Sutton Reeves’ book on Bill Nelson & Be Bop Deluxe, Music In Dreamland. Oh how exotic the cover of their Drastic Plastic album looked in the window of John Oliver’s record shop in 1978...

Karda Estra - Weird Tales

“I wanted a host to open the proceedings, rather like in an Amicus portmanteau horror film,” notes Richard Wileman of his tribute to Peter Cushing, the scene-setting ‘The Whitstable Host’, which opens the latest Karda Estra album with gothic disquiet and sets-up the mood for much of the remainder of the work. Karda Estra is Richard and collaborators, which this time includes my old mates Don Falcone and Bridget Wishart adding their instrumental talents to these symphonic movements (both appear on ‘The Eye of Silence’, Don contributing organs and synth arpeggios and Bridget playing her EWI wind synthesiser).

Though Richard takes the title of this release from the classic American pulp magazine, home of those wonderful yarns from H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard, the influences he’s taken in composing his progressive-goth soundtracks are wide-ranging. Howard’s Solomon Kane (‘Skulls in the Stars’) rubs shoulders with the Dadaist painter and sculptor Max Ernst (‘The Eye of Silence’, Ernst’s 1937 painting which also seems to be reflected in or partly shapes the cover artwork here). ‘The Atom Age Sense of Impermanence’ borrows a line from Kim Newman’s novel Dracula Cha Cha Cha (which, funnily enough, sits glaring at me, unread, from a bookcase here at Spacerock Towers and is, therefore, ripe for rescuing to the top of the ‘must read’ pile). Writers and painters are the driving force almost everywhere Wileman looks: Victorian ghost story author Sheridan Le Fanu, English artist Edward Burra, surrealist painter Andre Masson. I like that acknowledging of the reference points from which he’s painted his aural visualisations, it’s an inspiring thing in and of itself that leads the listener into looking up those points of interest, into digging a little deeper into the ways in which past creators have informed modern works.

Putting those inspirations aside though, Weird Tales could also be a film library soundtrack collection, both of those Milton Subotsky Amicus Productions movies and their Hammer counterparts, and indeed of those neglected 50s and 60s SF films, The Time Travellers and its ilk. This is particularly apparent as the atmosphere changes over the course of the tracks to take itself from the understated but funereal sounds of its early part to the more sci-fi sequences that round out the album, ‘Island Universes’ and ‘There is No Finished World’.

Kadra Estra capture an ethereal essence in their music, Wileman composing and producing work that has an elegant sense of space and distance between the musicians whilst calling on a range of instrumentation each of which complements the overall sound: violin, cor anglais, oboe, clarinet, tenor, alto and soprano sax, tuba. Weird Tales is richly rewarding in managing to be multi-layered whilst at the same time being unfussy and low key; a quiet soundtrack to think and muse to, really.


Karda Estra Website
Karda Estra Myspace
Cyclops Records

Isis - Wavering Radiant

Here’s one huge slab of force chiselled into seven tracks and released on CD and a (hallelujah!) 2LP vinyl edition, from a band that have been honing their work over the last twelve years to eventually arrive at this majestic collision of guitars, electronics and dynamics. It’s an epic vista, bold and brooding, concentrated and totally focused, drawing you in and surrounding you in its all-encompassing intensity. Isis take no prisoners, brook no dissent; they are powerful, driven and atmospheric, whilst their sound relies on bold drumming and urgent guitars... and jarring, guttural vocals.

That grating vocal style, prevalent also on the Space Mirrors disc recently reviewed here, is, I’ll concede, in keeping with the overarching, bellicose, style of this album so it’s rather churlish, in a way, to pick it out as the weak-link in an album that demands full-volume playing and delivers its strengths in spades. And in fact, two or three listens in and Aaron Turner’s rasping mode actually becomes more listenable than his more ‘progressive rock’ sounding singing voice and fits into the total drive of the album.

But Wavering Radiant is less about the vocals, producer Joe Barresi (who enjoys credits with Queens of the Stone Age amongst his notable achievements) has set these fairly low in the mix in any case, and more about the competing textures employed in the overall sound. ‘Hall of the Dead’ opens in a dark, sinister, mode that sets up the uneasy environment in which this work operates. ‘Stone to Wake a Serpent’ escalates from lightly-played guitars and electronics to harsh theatrics across its eight and a half minutes, echoing the guitars from ‘Hall of the Dead’. Everything about this record is of epic, granite, construction; it’s a tense work, tightly sprung; exploding out of its coil and then retreating back into itself again ready for the next wave of sonic assault. Isis produce a range in their work that is well-crafted and atmospheric and yet subservient to their original intentions of battering, extended riffs; all power to them.

Isis Website

Conspiracy Records

Hawkwind - Live Seventy Nine

I’ve always held Live Seventy Nine in high regard and listed it consistently as one of my favourite Hawkwind albums, and I think possibly one of the reasons for that is the way that it actually served as my first proper introduction to the band. I could probably even tell you went it was that I first heard it, if only the Jam gigs site actually listed the date of The Jam’s gig at the late, lamented St Austell Cornwall Coliseum but safe to say it was the night in December, 1980 that Weller and co made what appears to have been their only appearance at that venue. I know this, because it was my first proper gig and I got driven up to St Austell by my cousin, Richard Pascoe, who had this album on tape in the car and would play it regularly on the way to gigs. So I heard it that night, heard it again when The Who played and later when Elvis Costello put in an appearance. I’ll note here that he also had the box and inlay for Levitation, but the tape itself never materialised and it was quite a bit later that I picked up the blue vinyl LP of that one.

From there, it became a sort of good-luck tradition that I adopted, to play this album not only as the first tape in the cassette player on the way to gigs, but generally whenever there was a lengthy drive due (and, to be fair, most of those drives were out of the county to see Hawkwind in Bristol, or Plymouth). I got through my own cassette of the album, then later a home-made version with ‘Urban Guerrilla’ restored to the running order, and later again when I had a stab (incorrectly it seems) at which other available tracks might have been culled from the same St. Albans concert. Time has moved on, that faithful old tradition died out somewhere in the 1990s; I’ve only rarely heard this record again since but it still churns up the same nostalgic feelings when I slip it into a CD player, crank up the volume, hear the crowd rousing a cheer for the band and Hawkwind launching into that Steve Swindell’s masterpiece ‘Shot Down in the Night’.

I blog about that at some length, because I believe there’s a distinction between enthusing about an album that you love in the environment of a blog, and reviewing the same in the mainstream music press. In a blog, you can relate something of what a particular album means to you, how it affected your life (let me see, would I now be published writer had I never heard of Hawkwind... I like to think I would, but I have my doubts), whereas the job of the music critic, it seems to me, is to look at a body of work and place it in context to the back catalogue around it. So when I come to review it in conjunction with Quark, Strangeness & Charm then there’s a clear dilemma. I might love them both equally, but conversely I can see the significance of one over the other and am obliged to rank them accordingly.

So here’s my chance to extemporise around the subject of Live Seventy Nine for a few moments. Steve Swindells kindly e-mailed me an MP3 of his own version of ‘Shot Down in the Night’ recently, a great opportunity to compare how the writer saw his song in comparison to the live ‘cover’ by Hawkwind, both have their merits, and whilst I’m inclined to agree with Steve that his own reading is the superior version, there’s just something about Hawkwind shooting their set off ‘with a rush of adrenaline’ that made every time I saw them and they failed to open with this one become just a little bit diminished. This is the classic Hawkwind set-opener, in my humble opinion.

I think when the opening salvo of ‘Shot Down...’ gives way to the contemporary-as-hell rock of ‘Motorway City’, then you realise just how clever Dave Brock has been over the years in that constant replenishment and reinvention of his band. When you listen to Huw Lloyd Langton adding his totally inventive leads across this track and contrast that with what the band had been doing during their time on Charisma (totally valid material, just totally different from the ’79 line-up) then you see the originality in the thinking and the ability that Brock has to hear different sounds and combine them into something that is still definitively Hawkwind. That’s inherent in this line-up’s reinterpretation of ‘Spirit of the Age’ and the way they blast through ‘Master of the Universe’ and ‘Brainstorm’ as if to say, “Okay, here’s our take on these for the 1980s, we’ve not stood still you know.”

And then also a mention, of course, for Tim Blake’s ‘Lighthouse’, the quiet lull in the storm. Hindsight’s a great thing, but it’s a huge shame we don’t have decent sounding recordings of his ‘New Jerusalem’, also played on this tour, and the lovely and touching ‘Waiting For Nati’ that was played (twice?) the following year. But ‘Lighthouse’ also has a charm all of its own, and again was one of the tracks that lingered in the memory after first hearing this album on that December night so many years ago now.

So here are Atomhenge giving this much-loved album some priority in the release schedule, and quite right too; and fantastic to see Brian Tawn, who for so many years kept so many fans up to date with Hawkwind news, contributing to this reissue programme with his sleeve notes. I’m a touch disappointed not to hear ‘Urban Guerruilla’ restored back into the running order (it’s included, along with the single cut of ‘Shot Down...’ as bonus tracks), and it’s a huge shame that the original tapes of the full show are lost to the vagaries of time. But I also think to myself, next time I have a decent drive to undertake, I’ll stick this one on the top of the pile and drive away to it cranked up full.

Atomhenge

Space Mirrors - Majestic 12: A Hidden Presence

I must confess that I’ve rather lost track of what my old friend Alisa Coral has been up to since hearing her 2004 Space Mirrors CD, The Darker Side of Art which was released on Andy Garibaldi’s Dead Earnest label. Since then she’s released another, Memories of the Future, through the Greek label Sleazy Rider Records (in 2006) and now she’s back again with this release, her second through Sleazy Rider.

First up, it’s a bit unfair of me not to credit Space Mirrors as a band, because alongside Alisa is her long-time creative partner (another of those long distance collaborations so beloved of Spacerock bands it seems), guitarist Michael Blackman, who also makes music under the Alien Dreams banner and vocalists (perhaps new for this album?) Martyr Lucifer and Amber. In addition, this time around the band have recruited welcome guest appearances from two of the most ubiquitous contributors on the Spacerock scene, the father of the whole scene, Nik Turner, and the exceptionally talented electric violinist Cyndee Lee Rule, complete with her now legendary ‘Viper’ violin. Damn good starting point then.

A quick summation, then, about Space Mirrors: Alisa Coral is a multi-instrumentalist Russian musician who attracted favourable coverage at the start of the decade, when her Neutron Star instrumental album got her noticed in the Spacerock arena. The Darker Side of Art saw Alisa collaborating on-line with Australian Michael Blackman producing something that had a clear line from Hawkwind and Ozric Tentacles (whilst being denser in texture than either) whilst on Memories of the Future they took inspiration from the Dune novels of SF writer Frank Herbert.
Their new album leans heavily on those staple ingredients of Spacerock: alien visitations, Roswell, Area 51, and UFO conspiracies. Now, there’s part of me that wants the genre to move away from these concepts. I’m sure there’s plenty who’ll disagree with me, but I’m of the view that we are have reached a point where the general UFO mythos has been largely debunked and, from a Spacerock viewpoint, Hawkwind’s foray into the subject in the mid-90s is arguably the pinnacle of using UFO mythology and touchstones in this context.

Is it, therefore, redundant to write about these subjects? Not if it’s done well of course, and the lyrics here are a cohesive joining-up of associated themes so that aside from the key elements of UFOlogy, we have secret societies, ancient alien civilisations, and conspiracy theories. Plenty then to get our teeth into in this extremely well-realised concept album; it’s dark, mysterious and heavy with a huge sense of atmosphere. The vocals on the opening ‘Tunguska’ (from the credits, I’m not clear whether this is Alisa or Amber) have an unearthly quality that blends perfectly with the overall tone of the music, itself in places a little reminiscent of the Space Ritual opening ‘Born to Go’ but more expansive and varied, whilst Nik’s sax playing adds another dimension to the density of the surrounding guitar and drums. Martyr’s vocals elsewhere are guttural, variously credited as ‘clean, screaming and growling’, giving an abrasive Space Metal feel to his tracks.

Certainly not always an easy to listen to album, this record is challenging and startling, possessing huge presence – Martyr’s vocals are defiant and aggressive whilst the music is heavy and bold in its construction without losing sight of the need to be melodic. There is light and shade, Nik playing some lovely flute at the end of ‘Dreamland II: Area 51’ whilst his dialogue on ‘Krill Report’ is well realised. This is a well thought-out work, definitely residing at the extreme Metal end of Spacerock.

Space Mirrors Website

Space Mirrors Myspace

Sleazy Rider Records

Our Brother The Native - Sacred Psalms

Here’s a veritable cacophony of tribal beats, Native American textures and screeching chants that are vibrant, experimental, and challenging - and produced by a three-piece college band that collaborate principally across the Internet. Josh Bertram (vocals, guitar, saxophone, piano, banjo, organ, synth, drums /percussion, programming/samples/noise) and Chaz Knapp (vocals, guitar, banjo) have been working this project, pushing at their boundaries and building on their successes since 2005, releasing two previous albums and a recent EP with co-founder John Michael Foss, who it seems has now split leaving Bertram and Knapp to carry on with the ad-hoc assistance of violinist Kevin McKay. This release says they’re more than up to the challenge.

Crackling with euphorically released energy, Sacred Psalms externalises pent-up inner emotions, primitive repressed stuff that comes out in the freedom of uninhibited expression. ‘Well Bred’ opens in the echoing space of the wide-open country and then shrieks in a celebratory way that expresses its unconstrained dance, ‘I am your doctor / listen to what I say’ it appears to implore. If I’ve misheard that lyric, and such misunderstanding is forgivable in the way that the vocals are subservient to the percussion patterns that is their raison-d’être, then it certainly should say that anyway because the whole album has that joyous quality that comes with the music’s competing beats. ‘Endless Winter’ with its simple piano and gently competing vocals beguiles and moves with a real heartbeat aura to it. ‘Awaken’ enters with Aboriginal vibes and drifts into Oriental simplicity.

It’s probably a little unfair to labour the Native American tones to OBTN’s sound, they’re certainly embracing World Music as a whole, but (and not withstanding already being tuned in to that element of their work, having just enjoyed the latest issue of Jason Aaron & R M Guera's excellent Scalped, but that’s a worthy side digression) their sheer evocation of clear night air, huge campfires and open plains adds an ethereal, almost mystical element. Discordant, the drums compete for the groove against chiming metal, winding violin, piano and conflicting saxophone sounds.

I think we’re looking now for something that encapsulates something different from the crass commercialism of an increasingly irrelevant mainstream that says nothing to us that could help free us out of our modern social malaise. Our Brother The Native, on the other hand, are producing sounds that liberate us from our mundane, repressed existence and tell us that throwing off these contemporary problems and embracing the more primal part of our nature has great value. This is ambitious and vivid stuff built on widescreen visions and distant horizons.



Our Brother The Native Myspace Page
Our Brother The Native Website
Fat Cat Records