HW: Remasters

[J Strobridge]

obcaveat> These opinions are all mine - no-one else would want them
and I do concede that others may differ fundamentally from these views!

Wierd isn't it.   The most perfectly reproduced sound of Hawkwind ever
created.  Absolutely crystal clear, every instrument selected and
precisely nuanced with every other, pristine clean lyrics.   The
re-mastering is undoubtedly impressive and if you like sharp clear
sounds then you have to get these remasters.

But I think I started wrong:  I began with Hall of the Mountain Grill
and IMO this is not one of the albums that wholly benefits from such
precision sound.    The instrumentals are wonderful, the synthesiser
sounds drop like jewels of light into darkness, there are piano solos,
violin solos I'd never heard so well before, swirls of music sound, and
yet..... Hawkwind have a busy sound, a full, constant endless background
of sound and HotMG in its muddy state convinced you it was there.   But
now that's cleaned up and it's a bit like removing white noise from the
Universe - behind the bits there's only space and you realise that it's
a patchy album overall.   It's got a lighter feel than the previous ones,
probably deliberately so, and now you can hear it beautifully - but such
precision means that it's also lost a certain feeling of depth.   A
muddy guitar still sounds like a muddy guitar (no remastering can change
that) and now you can hear it there's no escape from it.   Nik Turner's
voice is, well, unique, and now it's so clear you can't tune it out and
only listen to the words - I sat listening to D-Rider and thought - hey,
I liked this track - and then worried about the past tense!

However I went on to play Doremi before the pub and In Search of Space
after and was a lot happier.   ISoS is, for me, the great classic
sound of Hawkwind and I was delighted to find that re-mastering has done
no harm here.  Although each muddy instrument sound retains its gluey
consistency, by separating out the instruments you can hear, clearly
and delightfully the extraordinary interplay the band created between
them and the almost freeform music they could create by expanding
or fading a basic theme and then sharing it around between the
different instruments.   The lyrics come over better too, far enough
back in the music not to dominate but clear enough now to hear them
without struggling.   And, again, the synth (audio generator -
whatever!) is wonderful.    Maybe the saxaphone benefits a bit too much
but heck, I can cope with that.

It's a very, very impressive job that's been done by EMI.    Some
aspects of Hawkwind's playing will gain enormously by this, and it will
perhaps also show up the weaker aspects of the band when they weren't at
their best as well, but that happens.    These are excellent re-issues
IMO and I'm busy working out which members of the family would be most
appropriate to get one or two as birthday presents.....  8-)

jill


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J.D.Strobridge at ed.ac.uk                         eset08 at castle.ed.ac.uk
                                                ELIJSA at srv0.arts.ed.ac.uk
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