Hawkwind-In Your Area. A quick review.

[William Duffy]

Hi there

Here's a quick review.

Tracks 1 to 6 (although it's really 4 tracks, as the other 2 are parts of
other songs)are live, and tracks 7 to 14 studio.

The first track is an excellent, and very heavy live version of Brainstorm,
with a really good guitar piece in there. Track 2, Hawkwind In Your Area, is
still part of track one, and is the reggae bit they do, with new lyrics by
Captain Rizz.
Next up is a live version of Alchemy, which is then followed by Love In
Space. This version isn't too long, with the majority of the track now
dominated by the heavy bit in the middle, which is now Rat Race, similar to
the other live versions, but with slightly different lyrics by Captain Rizz.
This is followed by a really powerful version of Aerospace-Age
Inferno.
The first of the studio tracks is First Landing On Medusa. The vocals claim
to be Dave Brock, but it sounds like Robert Calvert. Dave has done a very
good impersonation here. The track is really good too.

Track 8 is I Am The Reptoid, and is based around the middle part of Reptoid
Vision, but is a new track in it's own right.

Track 9 is The Nazca, a short track, running at less than one minute, and is
basically some narration with spacey music effects in the background.

Hippy is Track 10, and is destined to become a classic. As the title
suggests, it has lots of Eastern sounds about it, in the style of Kashmir,
but not a similar sounding track. It's just that it has lots of sitar
sounds, etc..

Track 11, Prairie, reminds me of the instrumental tracks by people like
Steve Hackett, Mike Oldfield, Steve Howe, etc., and is interesting since we
rarely hear this sort of track on a Hawkwind album.

Your Fantasy is a new track which has completely reworked Love In Space into
a completely different track. There's one or two other familiar bits in
there (such as Zarozinia), and is a lyrical track about the band (I
believe).

Track 13 is Luxotica, and reminds me of the partially ambient tracks by Bill
Nelson, with backward-sounding guitars.

Track 14, Diana Park, is Hawkwind doing Hawaiian music, but in a very
Hawkwind style.

This album, in my opinion, is the best they've done since the days of Space
Bandits. There's a lot of variety on here, and they haven't stuck themselves
into any particular format with the tracks.

It is an interesting mix, and has similarities with other part live, part
studio albums they have done. Anyway, I always thought the studio tracks on
these particular albums to be particularly refreshing.

Bye for now
William