Hawkwind

Also, I believe there was another good double-live '70s album: The Ramones, "It's Alive", released 1979. (When it's the RAMONES with a double-live, you know that's a LOT of songs.)

soon all will feel the power of the Wind.

I don't care if it's the musical equivalent of liking Doctor Who, it is utter and total classic and I now feel compelled to go out and buy every record they've ever made.

They have utterly APALLING lyrics. Really sub-Yes neo-prog-sci-fi silliness "High rise ... suicide MACHINE!!!" type things comparing blocks of flats to "human flypaper" (actually, come to think of it, that song is kind of genius, really...) but MY GOD, the Spacerock. It is spacerock which succeeds on both levels, i.e. it has wonderful chewy textures, but it also RAWKS.

"Space Ritual"
"In Search Of Space"
"Quark Strangeness & Charm"
"Doremi Fasolatido"

I think "Hall of the Mountain Grill" is also meant to be essential. And "Levitation" and "Warriors On The Edge Of Time" are also very likeable.

To get the real Hawkwind experience you should over a number of years acquire a dozen shoddily put together Hawkwind compilations with a few brilliant tracks each and a load of less essential material. "Stasis - the UA Years" has great studio versions of 'Urban Guerrilla' and 'Silver Machine'.

space ritual is thee greatest live album ever, no contest.

There's nothing wrong with liking Dr. Who, either.

There's just been a documentary on Hawkwind on BBC4.

I started watching five minutes in, not knowing what it was and thought it was a spoof. 'He left to join Leo Sayers backing band...', Matthew Wright on the Stonehenge Free festival 1984, Sam Fox at the 2000 re-union. Michael Moorcock in a panama hat. scores of Ridiculous ex-band members.

Extraordinary stuff. There's a whole alternate history of hedonsitic, fucked up, drugged up, unpleasant, britain in there.

It's a great documentary even if His Brockness doesn't appear. The footage of them playing outside Isle Of Wight was hysterical. Lots more in this thread Why Is Hawkwind The Greatest Band Ever?

http://www.blaskan.nu/Bilder/moorcock_butterworth_the_time_of_the_hawklords.jpg

I finally just found a copy of this - looks like a lot of fun

Does anyone know if the 2001 reissues improve on the somewhat muddy sound of In Search of Space and Doremi?

I only have one, the S/T, that no one ever seems to mention. and - I actually really like most of it! Plus it's the king of the Great Album/Horrible Cover category:

http://www.geocities.com/Area51/6568/hw01__st.jpg

far out man

there are TITS in SPACE

the s/t one is pretty good, it's just not propulsive, into-outer-space type shit. plus the 2001 reissue has hawkwind zoo tracks.

also, the 2001 reissues all sound better compared to earlier cd reissues, not sure about how they'd be compared to vinyl. good enough for me.

First one is still my fave.

slightly old news but Trensmat Records has released a trilogy of 3 Hawkwind tribute 7"s called Sonic Attacks...

TR013
Mudhoney - Urban Guerilla
Mugstar - Born to Go

TR014
Acid Mothers Temple & The Cosmic Inferno - Brainstorm
White Hills - Be Yourself

TR015
Kinski - Masters of the Universe
Bardo Pond - Lords of Light

This blog apparently has mp3 samples of all of the above..

http://lazybirdie.blogspot.com/2008/09/new-trensmat-singles-hawkwind-covers-by.html

just got these today. really good.

AMT version of "Brainstorm" sounds like it would be amazing. Can't even imagine Mudhoney doing "Urban Guerilla" for some reason.

dang. are these still available to actually buy anywhere?

i got them from piccadilly records.

mudhoney version of "urban guerilla" is kind of old, isn't it? i have an mp3 of it from a while back, i think it was on a comp.

is "warrior at the edge of time" the only one of their 1970s albums not to get the remastered & bonus tracks treatment? what's up with that?

IIRC there's some copyright difficulty with it, or some problems with who owns the master tapes, I forget the specific details (he said, helpfully)

the CD I have (DOJO label) appears to be a somewhat different mix to the vinyl - I have a cassette tape I made off of my old 12", and the guitars on "assault & battery" seem much louder in the mix. Can anyone confirm/deny this?

^^^^^^^^ I think this is my favourite album of theirs. It's certainly the one I still listen to the most.

Lives of great men all remind us
We may make our lives sublime
And departing leave behind us
Footprints in the sands of time

the snow snake hissed
and the world turned round
yhe snow snake grinned
in his fine cold sin

...AND THE WIZARD. BLEW. HIS HORN.

AND WE'RE TIRED OF MAKING LOVE

we are the warriors at the edge of time, and we are tired of making lunch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gF2ODWluPlY

ha ha! that's amazing.

I've got the album with that on. It's in a medley with a couple of other things though (of course).

YSI?

what's the title of the album so i can scour bargain bins for it?

It's on this one, which has a bunch of good stuff on it.

Rock

Thanking you!

That's like six posts up in the thread!

So it is. Honestly missed it first time around!

lol, me too.

This Bardo Pond cover of Lord of Light fucking SLAYS!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gF2ODWluPlY

sax: james onedin, drums: octave parango
perfect closer after nightshift

That same video has been posted 3 times already in this thread.

the live "you'd better believe it" on hall of the mountain grill rules. does anyone know, does it come from the same concert as space ritual?

I don't think any Hall made it to Space Ritual (it was recorded during '72 for the Doremi Fasol Latido tour, I think, and Hall didn't come out until '74.)

Same venue as a good chunk of Space Ritual (Edmonton Sundown) but recorded in Jan 74. The 1999 Party set is from this tour as well and absolutely smokes.

thanks for the tip. looks like there are chicago auditorium shows available from that tour. as long as i'm asking stupid questions, is there a study version of "you'd better believe it"?

There is apparently...... another new album!!

... and it's actually pretty good! I honestly haven't kept up with them at all, I've only had the classic 70s run of stuff. But this is way better than I would have expected Hawkwind circa 2012 to sound.

Jeez, Damnation Alley is so fucken amazing

Right-Click Choose View Image Click Magnifying Glass Icon For Necessary Details Over And Ouuuttt
(Source: International Times Cyberspace Archive)

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B2ctQJNCIAA4Kic.jpg:large

isn't that amazing? coulthart thinks it's a barney bubbles design with poss calvert text

Thanks for Tweeting that, Jay!

Gotta share this stuff with the people.

New box set of the '70-74 years - 11 cds, with new remasters of the studio records. Cheap as hell, too:

http://www.superdeluxeedition.com/news/hawkwind-this-is-your-captain-speaking-albums-70-74/

yup.

and its fucking brilliant.

in praise of... ((( HAWKWIND )) (( SPACE RITUAL ))) oO0OoO0OoO0OoO0OoO0OoO0OoO0Oo

:-)

Ha! Didn't see a thread had been bumped. Lots of Hawkwinfd threads.

$59.00 in the states.

I got it for about $45 (including shipping) on eBay.

That's probably what it'll be on Amazon marketplace after it drops.

Oh man that is like the most called for of any deluxe edition yet

for uk viewers / those who can access bbc iplayer, hawkwind was a specialist subject on mastermind yesterday.

hah I saw your post on fb about it. I bet there was loads of old hippies scrambling to watch it

So if I have the original records in their One Way versions (including Stasis: UA Years) is the boxed set worth it for the two live records I don't have and the odds and sods collection and better sound?

I say yes. I think the sound improvement is very noticeable. The 1999 Party is almost as good as Space Ritual, and used copies can be almost as much as the box set.

SOLD. Thanks.

1999 Party is my fave record of theirs

Better than Space Ritual.

nothing is better than space ritual, and that includes any record made by anyone else ever.

If a committe was put together to come up with the worst possible idea for a Hawkwind album, it's hard to imagine they could come up with something as bad as this - https://www.planetrock.com/news/rock-news/hawkwind-announce-orchestral-album-road-to-utopia-featuring-eric-clapton/

committee!

mike FUCKING batt?!?

eric FUCKING clapton?!?

this is def the funniest bad idea Brock has ever had

Sax FUCKING quintet!?

mike FUCKING batt?!?

Womble on the Edge of Time
The Psychedelic Wombles (Disappear in Smoke)
Orinoco Accumulator

... und so weiter

hawkwind ft katie melua

lets face it, I'm going to listen to this at least once and so are all of you

say no to drugs, kids

should've called it Road to Uttoxeter

first two tracks of this are on spotify btw

it’s no space ritual tbh

Better days (nights): some lost "Atomhenge" footage has been posted recently

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xniSGsBwlG8

need to get up and make something to eat but can't stop listening to Hawkwind At The BBC, send food or at least bleeps and bloops

This could be interesting:
https://www.daysoftheunderground.com/

https://static.wixstatic.com/media/dfe380_b03f3ab0c998475da160983e075f06a4~mv2.jpg

Avatars of the underground, figureheads of the free festival scene and heralds of punk, Hawkwind were one of the bands that defined the 1970s. At the height of their artistic and commercial powers, Hawkwind channelled and amplified the era’s psychic tenor via a science fiction sensibility, mind-blowing visuals, and their unique brand of deep space psychedelia.

As well as being an in-depth primer to the music of their classic years, Days Of The Underground explores the ideas and concepts that fuelled Hawkwind during this period, and speaks to the crew that manned the ship.

The book’s cover is illustrated by Hawkwind artist John Coulthart.

The Special Edition of the book will be in hardback, limited to 500 copies, signed by the author, and include the following additional items:

​Sideways Through Time: An Oral History Of Hawkwind In The 1970s – a 200 page companion volume of interviews, including DikMik, Nik Turner, Michael Moorcock, Stacia Blake, Alan Powell, Paul Rudolph, Adrian Shaw, Harvey Bainbridge, Andrew Lauder, Doug Smith, Jeff Dexter, Jonathan Smeeton and many more

A print of Michael Moorcock & Jim Cawthorn’s ‘Sonic Assassins’ comic strip from Frendz

Postcards featuring unseen pictures from the ‘Space Ritual’ photo shoot by Laurie Lewis

indeed! thanks for the heads up.

Whoa! That looks great.

since my hawkwind background is mostly me going "man i don't have time to be interested in _that stuff_" and then getting really absorbed in it, i'm just gonna start with "i'm interested in this stuff."

I guess this is the same Joe Banks who was behind the Disinformation project, given that the book's published by Strange Attractor who are into that kind of thing.

https://www.discogs.com/artist/34627-Disinformation

I'm not a huge fan of Hawkwind but I've read and greatly enjoyed two big books about them, they're an interesting cultural force.

I feel like this could be a really interesting book - I remember Lemmy talking about Hawkwind locking people inside the venue while they played, and I can imagine that being quite terrifying if you were on the wrong drugs. But the tiny excerpt on the website isn't that enticing. I'll wait for some reviews to find out if it's more focused on band history/social history (which I'd love), or on fevered description of the records (which I already own, thanks).

This was recently posted on Aging rock act on new album: This time we wanted to go back to the basics
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBweqmLk6dU

Nope, I still hate Silver Machine.

Still?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gF2ODWluPlY

i think that is maybe the most tolerable version. i always think it's a little sad that their best known song is one of their worst.

the best version of silver machine is always the one played by a busker you happen to be walking past

the most amazing thing to me is that last week i first learned who james last was, i listened to voodoo party thingy (meh+), and then fell into a vortex and heard a few horrible seconds of his silver machine/children of the revolution/schools out medley. and now it's back in my space. these are dark, incredibly weird times.

that is incredible that you had managed to go so long without having heard of james last.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0X2xr2Xbdaw

Cool little article, looks like that same author that wrote that book:

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/oct/19/why-hawkwind-were-the-great-radicals-of-1970s-rock

very cool and so true. long may the hawkwind reappraisal continue!

his book is excellent too.

Reading the book right now. It's very good, but as with their discography, I'm having a difficult time caring about anything after Lemmy's kicked out.

Hmm, how do you feel about post-Morrison Doors?

i love, nay adore everything up until '79 so the book covering just the whole of the first decade is perfect for me.

fair enough not being into anything they did post lemmy but there is a lot of gold in the next three or four years.

I tried Astounding Sounds, Amazing Music earlier this evening and couldn't get into it at all. Most of the problem was Calvert's vocals — he sounds a lot like early Bryan Ferry, which is a Very Bad Thing.

ok, if you don't like calvert then no point listening to that era.

i can't hear any similarity to ferry at all. he is simply the greatest.

I guess this is the same Joe Banks who was behind the Disinformation project, given that the book's published by Strange Attractor who are into that kind of thing.

https://www.discogs.com/artist/34627-Disinformation

― funnel spider ESA (Matt #2), Saturday, 21 September 2019 19:57

No - and THANK GOD - it is not the same guy. A music journalist with the same name. Phew!

It's very good, but as with their discography, I'm having a difficult time caring about anything after Lemmy's kicked out.

― but also fuck you (unperson), Tuesday, 20 October 2020 00:35

Also, this is absolutely crazy talk - and speaking as someone who formerly didn't go beyond Warrior AND LEARNED THE ERROR OF MY WAYS - it really is worth pushing further and exploring. I ended up buying a really cheap compilation album of their latter period, which was super-helpful in learning to navigate the later era.

Stuff like PXR5 is easily as good as anything from their early years - the whole sci-fi trilogy of that plus Quark Strangeness and Charm and Astounding Sounds is utteraly classic.

Also, I was in a cemetery in West London where I found a grave which had the complete verse from "Lives of great men all remind us, we may make our lives sublime..." carved on it and I was so so super-excited to find the grave of a Hawkwind fan - only to discover it was never Hawkwind at all, it's from a quote by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow?

Chiz!

I ended up buying a really cheap compilation album of their latter period, which was super-helpful in learning to navigate the later era.

What compilation was that? Do you have specific compilations to recommend for their early period as well? I've tried to get into Hawkwind several times without success, still hoping/expecting them to click since they're something that I should love on paper.

shout-out to that Hawklords album that completed their 70s run, it's really fantastic and very new wave influenced, might be an easy "in" for that period of the band

Look, this is not a reccommendation, because it really was a super-cheap bargain basement cash-in that was £2.99 at HMV:

https://www.discogs.com/Hawkwind-Master-Of-The-Universe/release/1455113

There are like dozens of Hawkwind compilations! I just found a series on Spotify called Hawkwind Decades. The 70s one is good for the post-Lemmy era even though it starts with Motorhead (the song) which is Lemmy.

It might help if you describe *what* about them, you think might appeal to you? Like, do you want more 60s psych (the first S/T), more 70s sci-fi-synth (In Search Of Space), the more Krautrocky/Kosmische edge (Warrior At The Edge of Time), raw punky garage rock (Doremi Fasol Latido)?

Or, what did you try that didn't work? Like, for a lot of people, including myself, Space Ritual was the first thing I heard, and it was... just so much. Almost too much, as a double live album. But picking out the songs I really liked from that, was a good way to work out which of the early albums to investigate further.

sorry! I am so bad at reccommending specific things.

Amazing sleeve.

Astounding Sounds, Amazing Sleeve

this, different to the one mentioned above, Masters Of The Universe comp - https://www.discogs.com/Hawkwind-Masters-Of-The-Universe/master/28026

and Roadhawks - https://www.discogs.com/Hawkwind-Roadhawks/master/47791

are good entry points into early Hawkwind, up to '75.

I can still remember when i bought "Space Ritual" the guy in the record shop saying how jealous he was that I was going to be hearing it for the first time and what a treat I was in for. That's exactly how I feel about anyone listening to it for the first time now.

and Neil S, 100% agree, the Hawklords album is so good. in my Hawkwind top 5.

LOL, I've got that one, too. But that one is "Masters" and my mostly post-75 comp is "Master" (clearly, after Lemmy left, Hawkwind only had one Master)

I read a biography of Hawkwind years ago which was extremely entertaining - crazy music, crazy guys (and gal) - but, for the life of me, I can't remember the title. It wasn't the Carol Clerk one. (By the way, I was sad to discover recently that Carol Clerk died 10 years ago).

Ha ha @ Branwell with an N.

When I say 'biography', more a history.

Tom, was it the "Hawkwind Sonic Assassins" book?

No, I'm sure it had a Hawkwind-y title like "Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun" or "Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth" and it was from the late 70s or, maybe early 80s. Then again maybe I'd absorbed some acid from the pages or something and it was nothing like how I'm remembering it.

I was gonna recommend the box set This is Your Captain Speaking...Your Captain is Dead (everything from the debut through Hall, the Greasy Truckers and The 1999 Party live sets, and a disc of singles) as an intro, since it was cheap when I bought it on release back in 2015, but I just checked eBay and Discogs and it's going for...a lot.

I read it in the early 90s but it had the look of the 70s underground press about it.

Found it!

https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1264868312l/7667156.jpg

I'm sure it had a different cover though.

Ah, ok. My housemate in the early 90s had that though I think it had a red cover.

Re-reading the lasst few posts and i didn't know Carol Clerk had left us either. How sad.

"Lives of great men all remind us, we may make our lives sublime..."

When I was in my very early teens I stole this to use in an English essay confident my English teacher would never have encountered Hawkwind. They hadn't but they did know Longfellow. Thanfully they didn't know of Robert Calvert who I mercilessly stole from.

Hold on, did we live together in the early 90s?

(nervous LOL)

Haha, that would be hilarious if true...

Is there another Hawkwind thread, because I swear I've talked about all this before (though perhaps it was one of the UK Watercooler threads)...?

I keep feeling like I've read a book about Hawkwind, but I can't seem to find one when I check my bookshelves. But when I checked my Hawkwind CD collection, I realised what it was - all of those 70s albums have book-length liner notes! I don't know if that was something specific to the reissues - following on from the Guardian piece, their album design and artwork and liner notes were always superb, the self-mythologising was already at legendary levels.

People who have read Hawkwind books, which is the best one to try to find?

Anyway, the thing I really feel like we've talked about before - those post-Lemmy mid-70s sci-fi trilogy albums - my 'way into' them was suddenly understanding that Hawkwind were in many ways like an English Kraftwerk - they addressed so many of the same futuristic themes, but from a completely different angle? The Germans dreamed this wonderful, shiny, utopian future - and Hawkwind looked at that same future and saw all of the ways that robots, skyscrapers, modernity could very easily become a nightmare. And that's the world in which PXR5 and Quark Strangeness and Charm take place - Kraftwerk have this shiny, utopian, perfect Star Trek future, while Hawkwind were living in this 70s Doctor Who science fiction where there was all this amazing technology - but none of it worked?

hence you end up with these amazing tracks like Uncle Sam's On Mars, Robot Robot and High-Rise - which actually describe the world we now live in even better than Kraftwerk's Computer World.

Reason: there are 8 million Hawkwind threads on ILX and one of the reasons I know so bloody much about Hawkwind is that there was an entire documentary about them, which I apparently watched and at one point owned, but have no memory of left at this point?

Why Is Hawkwind The Greatest Band Ever?

Tom, Tom! Is that really you?!?!

:-)

Branwell with an N, i think you totaly nail that (once again). Those Calvert lyrics really do seem very prescient and the Kraftwerk analogy is something that would never have previously croseed my mind but feels spot on.

If the Calvert era Hawkwind had been a band that had only existed for the "Astounding Sounds", "Quark... and "PXR5" albums (and "Hawklords" too) i do feel Hawkwind and Calvert in particular would be regarded in a much more visionary light. I love this era just about as much as the up to 1975 era but it is such a different entity.

I revisited this recently which Calvert more or less improvises as he goes along - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2czMOK5QbA

Quite incredible. FWIW, the first line contains a homophobic slur but I feel this was him playing out a character and not representative of what Calvert was all about.

What you're both describing is interesting in theory, but not something I'm all that interested in actually listening to... What I'm drawn to in Lemmy-era Hawkwind is not just his massive bass lines, which were crucial, but also Del Dettmar's synths, which were uniquely assaultive in a way that was somewhere right in between Jon Lord and Martin Rev. They really were a sonic attack from 1971-74/75, and that, more than the lyrical themes or concepts, is what hits right for me. I want to be bulldozed over by the dirty-future (grimy spaceships piloted by bikers and mechanics) rock 'n' roll, and that side of Hawkwind has never been equaled - not even by bands like Monster Magnet who at times blatantly ape them (even covering "Brainstorm"). SF lyrics mixed with New Wave AOR music, on the other hand = Not For Me.

what about pre-Lemmy Hawkwind?

I don't really like the debut, except for "Seeing It As You Really Are" - I see it as almost like the first Funkadelic album, in that the concept is clearly coming into form but it's not 100% there yet. (Funkadelic were a hell of a lot closer on their debut than Hawkwind were on theirs, though.) In Search of Space is fantastic, of course.

That's a wonderful find, Stirmonster!

Yeah, I'm just not invested in the concept of ~Rock'n'Roll~ as you describe, unperson - in fact, I find it kind of mystifying and more than slightly offputting. On many bands where we disagree about where to get off the bus (I'm thinking of your feelings on Neubauten, too) - it seems we're drawn not by different stuff (like, I love the dirtiness of it) but the *meaning* of the stuff. Like... fuck rock'n'roll. Who cares about it! It's almost like a lot of these bands are doing ~fucking with rock'n'roll~ and what you're drawn to is the rock'n'roll, and what I'm drawn to is the *fucking* of it. (In my terminology, what I'd call the

queering

I guess I can completely recognise what it is that you love about that period of Hawkwind - the sonic *assault* of it. But for me, what's good about that stuff is the sonic *otherness* of what they do to it while assaulting it, rather than specifically the assault.

ugh, I thought I did an italic but it did a quote? weird.

For a long time I also stopped with Warrior on the Edge of Time, but I picked up one of those cheap clamshell sets with The Charisma Years 1976-1979 that convinced me to dig a little deeper. I'll admit that after we hit into the 1980s I've been a little more scattered in my listening, I only have 1985's The Chronicle of the Black Sword, 1988's The Xenon Codex and 2012's Onward.

I'm just not invested in the concept of ~Rock'n'Roll~ as you describe, unperson - in fact, I find it kind of mystifying and more than slightly offputting... we're drawn not by different stuff (like, I love the dirtiness of it) but the *meaning* of the stuff. Like... fuck rock'n'roll. Who cares about it!

But that's the thing. I'm not drawn to meaning (remember, I'm the guy who ignores lyrics 90% of the time). I'm drawn to sound. So for example, I love Discharge not for what they're saying but for the way Hear Nothing See Nothing Say Nothing sounds — the beat, the disgusting guitar distortion, even the sound of the singer's voice although the actual words are value neutral. Same with Motörhead, same with Grand Funk Railroad, same with Cactus or Sir Lord Baltimore or whoever. Same with Neubauten, and with them it's even easier because I don't understand German.

I don't worry about the semiotics or the subtext, I just turn it up real loud in my headphones and bang my head and melt my brain. When people start talking about "rock 'n' roll" as though it has some spiritual meaning, to me that's marketing-speak, disguised as philosophy. I'm interested in guitars and drums as sound, in the Varèse-ian "music is organized sound" sense. How did this group of people choose these sounds, and why did they organize them in this way? I can recognize that they're in dialogue with previous sets of organized sound made by others, but I don't care. I care about what I'm listening to right then, because I could always be listening to something else.

For a long time I was one of those "who cares about the lyrics, they're just a texture" person. But the more I dug into that, the more I realised that ignoring lyrics often meant ignoring context.(And since context is never neutral - ignoring the context of the art usually means erasing the context of the artists and inserting your own in its place, which can be an act of violence, depending on what their context *is*.) Neubauten were one of the bands that truly drove that point home for me, because learning German unlocked a side to the band I'd previously never had access to, and made me realise how much about their *music* I had simply missed and missed out on.

I'd love to live in a world where the context of the sounds and what they mean never mattered, to have that freedom to ~just not care~, but who I am means I never had that choice. To me, it seems a very thin and shallow engagement with art. But y'know, that's your option.

There's a ton of stuff in 70s Hawkwind where I do have to kind of hold my nose and go "the 70s were a different country" (and there are definitely places where the outright hideousness of stuff like Spirit of the Age is so blatant it just makes me laugh and I can actually enjoy it *because* it is so much what it is).

The funniest thing I just noticed in one of the booklets is a photo of Hawkwind playing with all of their amplifier speakers piled up in the shape of Stonehenge? And that made me laugh so hard, because I had just dug through a pile of other CDs to find it, and one of the CDs had been the KLF - who also had used that same image, of amplifier speakers piled up in the shape of Stonehenge. Even more of these threads between rave and hippies, ha ha ha.

ignoring the context of the art usually means erasing the context of the artists and inserting your own in its place, which can be an act of violence, depending on what their context *is*

This is where we're likely to start talking past each other. I'll just say this — when an artist uses sound as their chosen medium, that means they're interested in sound, too, otherwise they'd have written a poem or painted a painting or something. Artists are artists; they make art. The way they grew up, or what they see when they look in the mirror (which I'm guessing is what you mean by "their context"), doesn't matter to me very much, because tons of other people grew up around them, or see something similar when they look in the mirror, and those people didn't/don't become artists. Also, the context of, say, Anthony Braxton writing a piece for 100 tubas is "I wanted to write a piece for 100 tubas". He views this as an option open to him despite having grown up poor and black in Chicago, and who am I to argue? I just listen, and the context for me is "I wonder what this will sound like?"

I’m really into the subtext of caravans, travelers etc when it comes to hawkwind...

my entry point to hawkwind was the first disc of some double(triple?) disc best of.. had a rendering of a celestial body in eclipse on the front. started with “hurry on sundown” and went through all the classic early jamz.. ahhhh

What I mean, by the "context" of the artist, is...

Like, what I was saying above, about Hawkwind's late 70s sci-fi and robots stuff being like the dark, dirty inverse of Kraftwerk's sci-fi and robots material. A lot of artists have explored robot themes in their work, and yet the work is very different, and comes to very different conclusions - robots in Kraftwerk are different from the robots in Hawkwind, who are different yet again from the robots in afrofuturist-influenced music, whether that's Newcleus or Model 500 all the way down to Janelle Monae.

Why are the robots all so different, why does 'robot music' sound so different - and yet oddly similar - if it's trying to describe the same thing? Well, Kraftwerk were not just white and German, they came from the *class* which owned factories and programmed computers, and so of course, to them, robots are shiny and pristine and happy utopian ideal programmed just to serve you. African-American artists looked at robots and went, "holy shit, we *are* the robots" - and their work went off in that direction, exploring what it would be like to be the electronic slaves of a deeply unequal society, treated as if they weren't even human. So their robot music was quite different.

What was Hawkwind's context? Hawkwind were white and British, but specifically ~white working class~ - and they looked at robots and expressed the very contemporary fear "fuck me, robots are going to steal our jobs and steal our girls". And how white working class men, in Britain, dealt with those fears in the 70s, as they realised that the post-Windrush post-Empire immigration was not going away - informed a great deal of what music happened in Britain in the 70s and 80s.

That a whole bunch of white, european working-class dudes decided to double down on whiteness and maleness - to me the entire genre of hard rock and heavy metal through the 70s and 80s was a bunch of white dudes having lots of big angsty/angry feelings about their whiteness and maleness. While a whole bunch of *other* white working class dudes took the option of 'what if... solidarity with the not-white and not-male?' And you have all these other musical movements, of rejecting stereotypical maleness in favour of glam or synthpop or disco in musical styles that coded female or gay; or of rejecting whiteness in favour of Black music, of world music, of reggae or disco or house or rave.

Where was Hawkwind, in this branching? They often appeared to be doing both at the same time - there was a doubling-down White Male Heavy Metal element to their music; and there was also a weirdly camp element (I mean, Robert Calvert doesn't *sound* anything at all like Bryan Ferry, but what they do have in common is that they were both AS CAMP AS A ROW OF TENTS, like, weirdly, I read the homophobic slur in Stirmonster's video as him acknowledging that yes, this skinny camp dude dressed like Lawrence of Arabia was playing with his own campness?) and also something that would totally blossom into tribal-earth-rave-traveller hippieness (and I have such mixed feelings about it as discussed on the Megadog thread, because so much of that stuff was at the same time, both a rejection of capital-W Whiteness, but also weirdly appropriative, like doing the wrong things for the right reasons, or vice versa?)

Like, I don't know which branch of context to put Hawkwind into, and that's part of what is so *GREAT* about them! They were so self-contradictory!

But this context both *influences* what they sound like; and at the same time gives a meaning to those sounds after the fact. This music doesn't float down on a cloud of sound from nowhere.

Yes, yes, yes! Really fascinatng insights.

Robert Calvert was indeed super camp, so intriguing that that slur was him perhaps playing with that. I wonder if Hawkwind's audience during the Calvert era thought he was "AS CAMP AS A ROW OF TENTS"? I have a feeling not, particularly as I must have read a thousand Youtube comments written by fans who had followed them through the 70s and have never seen it come up.

I also think Brock was perhaps a but adrift at this time so was happy to have Calvert steer the good ship Hawkwind. I'm forever thankful he was as when he was forced to take back control after Calvert's departure he took the ship on the wrong course, imo.

Interesting tidbit I didn't know about from the Encyclopedia of SF entry on the band (http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/hawkwind):

As if to reinforce, or perhaps slyly mock, these quasi-literary pretensions, this year also saw the publication of a novel. The Time of the Hawklords (1976) by Michael Butterworth (Moorcock is credited as "Producer/Director" for the book) fictionalizes a fantasy version of the band, who have access to a musical instrument that can end suffering.

It's not very good. There's a folow up called "Queens Of Deliria" which isn't great either. Not sure if the triology was ever finished.

https://dangerousminds.net/comments/the_sci_fi_trilogy_about_hawkwind

Yeah sounds better suited to the graphic novel format.
The one time I saw Hawkwind with Calvert (age 13, mind blown) he spent a lot of the set pretending to play golf with his mic stand. I think that might have been the gig he and Moorcock allegedly had a punch-up backstage due to one of them having an affair with the other's wife. Not very sci-fi really.

Anyway great insights from Branwell, looking forward to more!

Oh man I wrote a post about campness and whether or not camp is or isn't inherently big-tent queer and also about how Hawkwind involved wizards and Wizards! belong to the gays (and whether that's a recent coding based on recent cinematic depictions of wizards by gay actors?) but my computer ated it. Probably better that you guys were spared that!

I don't think I've ever knowingly read any Moorcock, is any of it worth pursuing? (I'm guessing it would be one of those things you had to start reading when you were a teenager.)

The one time I saw Hawkwind with Calvert (age 13, mind blown)

I am beyond jealous.

Sorry about your post Branwell!

I was quite into Moorcock as a teenager, particularly the Jerry Cornelius series, but not sure how it would be reading it now and imagine I won't ever re-investigtate.

Yeah, as a teenager I absolutely adored a ton of sci-fi and fantasy stuff that I would shudder to re-encounter as an adult, so I think it's best to leave him.

(I also wonder if there is a similar ~magic age~ at which one has to encounter Hawkwind for the first time, where they are able to capture that sense of wonder - like seeing them at 13 would have been amazing! But also, seeing them for the first time at 40, I felt transported to being about 13 again, so perhaps not?)

I've read the Elric books — first as a teenager, and then a few years ago; re-bought the whole DAW paperback series on eBay. They're okay. I didn't find anything especially "problematic" in them aside from incest among royalty, which...whatever. The prose is as overwrought as one might expect but each one is a fun enough way to kill an hour or two.

So many of the Elric stories feature the same scenario: he encounters an enemy, calls on supernatural aid which utterly vanquishes his foe, but kills one of his friends or allies at the same time. It's more like reading a book of myths than a dramatic novel.

Moorcock's prose is not great either, but many of the scenes and setups are interesting to recall when you're not actually reading his writing.

I feel Moorcock as editor has aged better than Moorcock as author? His run on New Worlds magazine is all-time and from a "heavy downer entropic SF" point of view feel very Hawkwind-adjacent. Also some amazing design in the original mags. Some of those paperback anthologies are well worth picking up IMO.

Moorcock churned them out by the yard in the 1960s (partly to finance New Worlds) - I find a lot of them tough going but some are fun - from memory The Black Corridor was a pretty good space-based bad trip novel.

I just downloaded a set of several of the novels in PDF form, and it just started out waxing poetical about Elric's ~milk-white hair~ and ~crimson eyes~, and this is such serious Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way shit I gotta laugh?

Will reading this RUIN Hawkwind for me?

I also wonder if there is a similar ~magic age~ at which one has to encounter Hawkwind for the first time

I have evangelised about Hawkwind forever but feel fairly sure I have never managed to get a single person into them. Maybe a track or two but not beyond that, so perhaps 13 really is the magic age to get into them?

I don't think reading Moorcock will ruin them for you.

Whhy does the namme of everyything in thiis bookk havve unneccessarry doubble letterrs?

I'm trying to think of how I first got into Hawkwind - I was a bit older than 13, but still very definitely in my teens. Maybe 17 or 18? There was this local punk rock dude that my girlfriend (and I, TBH) were kind of obsessed with - he played bass in the local noise rock band. Anyway, he loved Lemmy, and he kept raving about how great Hawkwind were - I think he played The Black Corridor for us? He used to recite the words all the time, for any occasion, and it just sounded like the most amazing thing I had ever heard.

So I had this idea in my head that Hawkwind were ~the coolest band in the galaxy~ already set in my head, before I ever heard an album by them.

I was 13, maybe 14 and a friend had bought "Warrior On The Edge Of Time" and hated it so gave it to me saying " you like weird stuff so might like this", which was odd as i don't think anything I was into at that point was at all weird.

But he was right and it was an epiphany. I can still remember listening for the first time to the part where "Assault and Battery" turns into "Golden Void" (which i always thought was a Mellotron but is actually Simon House's violin) and just knowing I was 1000% in.

Aw, that is such a good album! I'm kinda jealous you got to start with *that* one, at such a young age, because it is at this point probably my favourite of theirs? (When bands transition between two very distinct eras, I always find that the transition point albums are my favourites.)

I was looking for it all day yesterday and couldn't find my physical copy. (Maybe I lent it to someone; maybe I never had one and ripped it off a friend?)

Now of course I've got to listen to it on Spotify and try to find that point you describe - the general deep, intense, phaseiness of all of the sounds, how they mesh together in this cloud of wall-of-sound that is both unbelievably dense and absolutely lighter than air in the vaccuum of space...

Aw yeah, I just got there and listening for it carefully, I got shivers, man! There's a lifting, orchestral 'strings' sound, on top of the gurgling electronics sound, but also an incredibly strange almost shrieking horse-whinny sound (maybe it is Magnu of the Golden Mane?) that kicks in about 5:50 spirals up into the void - is that the thing you're talking about?

(It's so strange the way that I listen to this music with two minds at once - like, there is a sensible adult mind telling me that this stuff is completely and patently absurdly ridiculous, and then at the same time, there is some kind of childish wonder-mind that *always* wins out, and just thinks this is the most wondrous and awe-inspiring and magical thing I have ever heard?)

((There is this... vocal quality to The Wizard Blew His Horn that is *exactly* the same thing that I love about that Enigma record The Voice And The Snake we were all talking about the other week. It is totally ~Reading The Gospel In Church~ tone and it just does something to me, there should be incense and coloured lights and men in strange robes and everything is both fearful and amazing.))

Yes, around 5.50 is exactly the moment. Into the void with Magnu of the Golden Mane :-)

I have the two minds at once thing going on too. It is indeed absurdly ridiculous but also ecstatic, joyous, almost overwhelming, and yes, awe-inspiring and magical. I never tire of hearing it.

the last Hawkwind album I heard was "Amazing Sounds, Astounding Music". despite the title I did not find the sounds nor music all that great. "Kerb Crawler" is an excellent tune though

"Amazing Sounds, Astounding Music" is one of my favourites and I'm always perplexed as to why it gets so little love. Not even a bit of love for the mighty "Steppenwolf?"

Under skies heavy with snow
My eyes are convex lenses of ebony
Embedded in amber
I am a man-wolf
The fat bourgeois and his doppelganger
Are buried in their solid glare
Twin specimens of insect, set for display
I am a wolf-man

Of course it is "Astounding Sounds, Amazing Music"

idk...the grooves just feel so bare

I do love the lyrics to that tune of course

Hawkwind may not be a band for me

Haha, OMG those lyrics are beyond Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Calvert but alright, alright, Stirmonster I will give it a listen tonight!

Ha ha! To retread what was being discussed yesterday, it is the way those words SOUND / Calvert's phrasing that does it for me.

Hawkwind may not be a band for me

Not at all! "Astounding Sounds...." is much derided and many big time Hawkfans loathe it.

I think the bare grooves are what I love. It grooves in a way none of their other records do and i love the production.

it is worth noting that Dave Brock still to this day disowns it. He even apologised for it on the inside sleeve of their next album. He is wrong.

so then which later albums would you recommend

Post 1975 I'd recommend "Quark Strangeness & Charm", "PXR5" and the Hawklords album. Once we get past '79 apart from a few songs and "Church Of Hawkwind" (which i dig but is even more disliked by many Hawkfans than "Astounding Sounds"), I'm pretty much out.

Not even a bit of love for the mighty "Steppenwolf?"

Chiming in to say that this is one of my favorite Calvert tunes. Great lyrics, great performance.

Ha! It's really funny, how reading the lyrics on a page, I was convinced that was the worst song evah, but going back and listening to the tune - Robert Calvert's delivery, and how absolutely he embodies those ridiculous lyrics with complete intensity, combined with the atmosphere of the music (that violin!) - it's actually really moving?

Never judge a Hawkwind track by what it looks like on the page! Never!

Reading from Twitter that Nik Turner passed away yesterday :(

ah no! been going through a bit of a hawkwind phase of late too

Me too, totally hooked on 'We Took The Wrong Steps Years Ago', especially.

no!!! i hadn't heard. i had had a strange sense recently we'd lose an OG hawklord but i guess not so strange as they are getting on. really sad.

there are so many great NT tracks. this live D-Rider is just epic. his voice! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSmya2TR5wc

he was the heart of early hawkwind. the gentle out-there heart. last time i saw him with them was early 80s and he was on stage on rollerskates, with the craziest hair looking as if he was in the wrong band. the OG Acid Punk.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkqCF3RUuJY

a sad lack of hawklove.

RIP Nik Turner - need to mention his band after Hawkwind - Inner City Unit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APTqKK2YV3s

Still reeling from the sad loss of my friend Nik Turner. I’ve known Nik for nearly 50 years. He was one of a kind. An inspiring and warm hearted human being, always game for musical adventures. With his departure this world is a lesser place, as his Spirit rides free. ♥️

— Steve Hillage (@stevehillage) November 12, 2022

i forgot how good this is (reminded by the hillage tweet).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63S4x_xBwDI

this one too, with Miquette Giraudy on vocals

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2U05HunYjwM

hadn't heard either of those before, very cool

listening to 25 Years On by Hawklords right now, where have you been all my life you beautiful new wave/solo eno/space rock/berlin bowie concoction??

See also Hawkwind's "Quark, Strangeness and Charm"

so a local bar here does a "prog night" every week and I befriended enough people there to feel obligated to go to the first ever performance of a Hawkwind tribute act (I mean nearly the entire band goes to this). they played at 11 PM and did like 5 songs off Space Ritual to a very young and very very drunk crowd and it fucking KILLED. and they say Hawkwind just isn't cool anymore (disclaimer: only like three of us knew who Hawkwind were)

Cool

Hawkwind is always cool, it is "they" who are wrong

Imagine doing the Del/Dik Mik roles in a Hawkwind tribute act, what fun!

... and Stacia?

no but the drummer (who was shroomin) was in a corset

I used to play sometimes in the audio generator role with a band heavily influenced by Hawkwind, it was quite fun! Easiest gig ever I have to say, I was using a Moog Rogue.

lol yeah the dude doing that was a pretty accomplished musician but I think didn't practice with the band at all. the sax dude wasn't very good and was relieved to find out nobody could really hear him. also the smoke machine went into overdrive and apparently after the first song they couldn't see anyone in the audience. I told them they probably didn't need it because so many people were vaping in front anyway. the drummer was insane though. you ever see that "drummer at the wrong gig" video? he played like that the whole time

Nik Turner was never exactly Sonny Rollins either tbf

Imagine doing the Del/Dik Mik roles in a Hawkwind tribute act, what fun!

i'd sign up for that, though i think Del did have some actual musical talent so maybe I'd be best suited to the Dik Mik crank the joystick on the VCS3 role.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vb9xyMY2dFo

frogbs this sounds amazing, I am so jealous. let's bring Hawkwind back in the 2020s!

No details yet, but Cherry Red just announced that on September 29 they'll be releasing a 10 CD/1 Blu-Ray box set of Space Ritual. I think my brain just melted...

i can't see it on the website but eager to hear what is on it. i see there is also a steven wilson remix of warrior on the edge of time forthcoming too. i don't feel a need to hear a remixed version but interesting it is coming in the OG shield sleeve.

Speculation on Twitter from Joe Banks (author of Days of the Underground)

If we have a remix/remaster of the original, plus the full Brixton and Liverpool shows, that's 6CDs. Then Sunderland and/or Margate. 2 Blu-Rays for 5.1 mix. But what I REALLY hope is included is the Wembley Pool footage I unearthed during my book research, restored and synched! pic.twitter.com/FnOb82ZqU3

— Joe Banks (@JoeBanksWriter) June 14, 2023

Yeah, I saw that. And apparently the band's current bassist has confirmed the Sunderland show will be in there.

This is great, I listen to Space Ritual and the surrounding live recordings more than any other Hawkwind records, so to have a bunch of these gigs in full would be excellent.

More info - https://www.loudersound.com/news/hawkwind-detail-mammoth-eleven-disc-space-ritual-box-set

frogbs, has the Hawkwind tribute band had any more performances?

Thought this might be bumped for the pretty solid new album. Thighpaulsandra clearly a good addition to the lineup. Not a patch on prime era, obvs, but some solid space rock and well exceeded my expectations.

Not yet!!! But they’re playing again next week I think. So I’ll be there :)

Inspired by this thread, I've been listening to Hawkwind all afternoon and now am in an altered state of consciousness. I await the arrival of the Universal Hero.

First day of forever has been a disappointment here at my house but maybe tomorrow

From the SCIENCE70 archive: Barney Bubbles, personal stationary of Stacia, dancer for the band Hawkwind, 1973. #graphicdesign #1970s pic.twitter.com/s3wUzZdGY5

— SCIENCE70 (@SCIENCE70blog) June 16, 2023

so awesome.

i now want to see if he made other art with aubrey beardsley elements but my barney bubbles book is in a box

(apologies for the alliteration but what choice had i)

gorman describes it as "unique" on his website (but that might mean the concept rather than the design lineage)

The Future Never Waits is pretty solid! Obviously not a patch on any earlier career peaks, but this is better than I expected and probably my favorite since Onward.

FTR, I have been unexpectedly flush since starting a new job, so I pre-ordered the giant Space Ritual box.

I've been mighty tempted, but not sure I can justify it at the moment...

I ordered it straight from the label and thus overpaid (though they did offer tracked shipping), but there are some discounts available here and there.

I ordered it straight from the label and thus overpaid

lol

On such a big Hawkwind kick lately and really eyeing that Space Ritual box but having trouble justifying the cost. I hadn't realized until today that the Space Ritual album itself is included twice, with different mixes, so kind of only an 8 disc box.

Listening to it now — the full concerts are great (the actual album was pulled from the Brixton and Liverpool shows, but the Sunderland show is entirely previously unreleased) and I'm definitely interested to hear the new mix of the album, on which a couple of songs have been extended and a version of "You Shouldn't Do That" has been added.

The live shows are really clear and loud, which is a problem the original album always had — no matter how loud you turned it up the mix always felt underpowered somehow. Also, the whole thing reminds me that Lemmy really belongs on any list of rock's greatest bassists. He was the engine in the Hawkwind rocket, but so much more than that, almost a lead player half the time and really shaping the music in a way I can only compare to John Entwistle.

Ended up relenting and picking up the Space Ritual box. Only got delivered late last night so I haven't had a chance to dive in yet, but it looks gorgeous.

The new mix of the album is amazing.

i think the biggest revelation for me is that I had always heard that Dave Brock had done a massive amount of overdubbing on the live tapes but that patently isn't the case from listening to the Sunderland gig. Also notable how well rehearsed they were as the Sunderland gig doesn't massively deviate from the Space Ritual set we know and love (there's a bit less of a freak out jam on Orgone Accumulator). looking forward to delving in deeper. The booklet rules too.

in related activity i'm off to see Hawklords tonight.

"Also, the whole thing reminds me that Lemmy really belongs on any list of rock's greatest bassists. He was the engine in the Hawkwind rocket, but so much more than that, almost a lead player half the time and really shaping the music in a way I can only compare to John Entwistle."

I'm reading Joel McIver's Motorhead book and there is a line by Lemmy in there talking about Hawkwind that really at the core it was a trio, as really him, Dave Brock and Simon King locked in then rest of the group just did whatever they wanted on top.

Lemmy can obviously play "lead bass" when it suits him but he usually wanders a lot less than Entwistle. He doesn't mind hammering the same riff over and over.

Should be past tense, he's neither wandering nor hammering these days.

you dont know that

happily hammering in hell

you dont know that

If he was, you could still hear him

i am looking at the 5.1 blue ray and contemplating resuscitating the blue ray player on my never used "entertainment center" which is nice enough and all, but...

anyone listened to it? then i think of how much i appeciate the remain in light 5.1 downmix i got somewhere. should i try downmixing on like vlc? but i've always heard downmixing is a miserable and failprone marathon. anyone know?

i been listening to this box over time and slowly, finally got the disc9/10 stereo remix. whoa.

picked up the space ritual 50th anniversary vinyl. so good

If its 10cds, not sure how much vinyl that is. So sounds pretty heavy.

is the vinyl not just the original 2 x lp?

There's a new 50th anniversary stereo remaster in the big box. Maybe that's been released on vinyl. (It's really good.)

But did they recreate all this?

https://i.discogs.com/52nvKPjnq0t4fBGYfoKfOa0hrzMf_TDzzbF3rHLKJnU/rs:fit/g:sm/q:90/h:393/w:600/czM6Ly9kaXNjb2dz/LWRhdGFiYXNlLWlt/YWdlcy9SLTY0MDQw/Ni0xNTE5MzU4MzM0/LTY0NTQuanBlZw.jpeg

https://i.discogs.com/apUnY0L04rfYZs0FyoLx0Xi36wMSQvS0B0XKDqz7qcc/rs:fit/g:sm/q:90/h:393/w:600/czM6Ly9kaXNjb2dz/LWRhdGFiYXNlLWlt/YWdlcy9SLTY0MDQw/Ni0xNTI5NDc2Mjgw/LTc4OTUuanBlZw.jpeg

Got the CD box set for Xmas, and yeah they recreate all the artwork and the tour program etc

Ha maybe tonight I play the dvd 5.1, still haven’t yet

Recently, There Is No Space For Us (the song) turned up in my weekly release radar and I was so pleasantly surprised that I checked out the album. Which has led me to check out other recent material. Since reviews are indicating that the last 3 albums might be the best material they've released since the 70s.

Halfway through a free jazz epic called 'They Are So Easily Distracted' and they aren't kidding, are they!

I think they are on a really decent roll right now! I haven't heard the newest one yet, but I liked The Future Never Waits and Stories From Time and Space a lot. Definitely the most I've been interested in their current work in some time.

"They Are So Easily Distracted" is wild. I heard it the other week and posted on Bluesky (and possibly here, I forget) "TIL that there's a 10 1/2 minute instrumental on a Hawkwind album from 2023 that's, like, the exact middle ground between Kamasi Washington and Tangerine Dream."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvTazGa5X8E

i gotta play catch up!

The Future Never Waits was really incredible so today I'm trying Stories From Time and Space.

Obviously, the music is really incredible, which is what makes it so compelling. They've currently got a really fluid rhythm section who seem willing to explore further into jazz and latin inflected rhythms. The Starship (One Love One Life) has just launched into an extended Can-like boogie! Hawkwind have always had a truly awe-inspiring sense of dynamics. They understand that to make the really driving, full-on rave-up spacerock sections powerful, you have to open up those spaces of quiet wonder between them.

But I think what is hitting me at the moment is also the lyrics? Hawkwind lyrics have always been very portentous, heading occasionally into being silly, but delivered with such gravelly gravitas that you enter the willing suspension of disbelief that makes wonder-based sci-fi plausible. But now, given Brock is in, what? His 80s? I think there's a greater depth to his musings on time, age, impermanence, ruins. The early albums were made by young men pretending to be wizard sages. But at this point in his life he's reached the stage of wizard sage, for real.

'Upload your consciousness here, and leave your body at the door marked "incinerator"'

Yeah, the rhythm section is great, I think adding Thighpaulsandra was a good move.

i think adding Thighpaulsadndra was genius! This is so good; I never thought they would be this good again.

He somehow makes so much sense being in Hawkwind that it's hard to believe he's such a recent addition.

Looking at the timeline of their members it seems like they added a new bass player around the same time

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Hawkwind_band_members#Timeline

It's crucial that a Hawkwind bassist should be able to do the Lemmy chug-chug-chug motorik thing, but this new fellow seems to bring significant groove with him. Which is very welcome!

While I can't say I have all of Hawkwind's main albums, I have pretty much 98% of the ones I want, just a few gaps here and there, mostly in the '00s.

The one I want most, that is exceedingly difficult to find for decent money (even with the Atomhenge reissues), is 1992's Electric Tepee.