This, however, is one I
can dedicate some time to.
Album title: In Search of Space/ X In Search of Space
Artist: Hawkwind
Nationality: English
Label: United Artists
Chronology: Second
Grade: A
Factsheet: One of the grand old men of prog and space rock, Hawkwind’s second album saw some changes to their lineup, with a bad LSD trip causing bassist Huw Lloyd-Langton to leave the band. The album begins Hawkwind’s creation of their own legend in a sort of ongoing science fiction story involving the “Spaceship Hawkwind”, and established Hawkwind as one of the best acts to “trip out” to. This is a label they continued to have throughout their exceptionally long career, and still do.
Tracklisting: You Shouldn’t Do That/ You Know You’re Only Dreaming/ Master of the Universe/ We Took the Wrong Step Years Ago/ Adjust Me/ Children of the Sun
Comments: It’s never been that easy to review a Hawkwind album. What can you say? It’s more a shared experience that you really have to hear and undergo than anything you can write about. Feedback, special effects, weird chants, experimental sounds, taped recordings, they’re all there and indeed the album opens with one of these, meant perhaps to represent the take off of an alien ship into space. Whistling synths, whining guitar, screeching sax and something that sounds like a sitar but almost certainly is not takes us through a fifteen-minute odyssey into sound, or what Arnold Rimmer once called “a voyage to Trip-Out City.” Indeed. Some vague vocals but nothing you could pin down.
“You Know You’re Only Dreaming” on the other hand has a droning and somewhat slurred vocal driving it, and sounds a little on the reggae side to me, though it soon develops into another spacey jam, nowhere near as long as the opener of course. The only song I know on this - one of the few Hawkwind songs I do know - is “Master of the Universe”, which again features a strong, clear vocal with a rising synth line and a very distinctive guitar and bass line that for me all but typifies the Hawkwind sound (of what I’ve heard). You won’t be at all surprised to hear that it turns into another extended jam. Sounds like there’s some harmonica in there too. By contrast, completely, is “We Took the Wrong Step Years Ago”, an acoustic number with some synth backing.
After that brief interlude it’s back to the spacey synthy stuff for “Adjust me”, a darker, deeper vocal which intones the lyric rather than sings, and then goes up the scale from normal to superfast as the feedback continues. “Children of the Sun” closes the album and is, surprisingly, another acoustic piece
Favourite track(s): Master of the Universe/ we Took the Wrong Step years Ago
Least favourite track(s):
Personal Rating: 3.50
Legacy Rating: 4.5
Final Rating: 4.0