HW: XC & IitBotFtbD

[Doug Pearson]

Because they're my personal lowest-rated Hawkwind ("real") studio albums
without the RCA/Active imprint on them, I followed the crowd and revisited
'Xenon Codex' and 'It is the Business of the Future to be Dangerous'
(IitBotFtbD) this weekend.  I can't say that my opinions were changed, but
I did come up with an interesting observation/approach with respect to the
latter ...

With respect to Xenon Codex, John Stanton <prabbit at GOWEBWAY.COM> mentioned
on Tue, 20 Jun 2000 19:51:25 -0000:
>I like a number of the songs on Xenon but the leaden drumming and esp the
>dreaded "gated snare"/Dancing In the Dark drum sound/80's production pretty
>much kills the lp for me.

These are the biggest problems for me with the overall sound of the album.
I don't find it murky, muffled, indistinct, poorly-mixed, or anything else
that other folks mentioned.  It sounds perfectly clear to me - I wish it
didn't, because then I wouldn't have to hear the gawdawful 80s production
cliches that it's encumbered with.  The digital processing on Huw's leads
sound like crap!  Just like the gated digital reverb on the snare.  And the
digital (sampled?  DX7?) "piano" on "Lost Chronicles" sounds pathetic.  Of
course, the late 80s were a very bad time for this sort of thing, so I'll
still give the band credit for managing to get good synth sounds on the
record (of course, a Hawkwind album *without* good synth sounds would be
unthinkable!).  Danny Thompson's drumming has been commented on enough, so
I'll just say that the tracks with drum machine on them ("Wastelands of
Sleep", "EMC") come as a relief - never thought I'd say THAT.

As for the album content, none of it is bad; it's a very solid example of
late-80s Hawkwind.  But I find many of the songs to be forgettable generic
HW-rockers: "The War I Survived", "Neon Skyline" & "Sword of the East"
definitely fall into that category (fortunately Alan's songwriting improved
greatly for the next few HW albums he was on).  Then again, I'm confounded
by the stuff on the album I *do* find most interesting: "Mutation Zone" and
"Good Evening".  The former is obviously very un-Hawkwind at first listen,
but Harvey's sense of humor (something that saves a lot of their 80s output
for me) is quite apparent in it, and I'd say it's yet another case of the
band being too-far ahead of their time (the kids these days love that
rap/metal/industrial stuff, right?).  And I'm probably a small minority,
but "Good Evening" might be my absolute favorite 80s Hawkwind studio track;
it sounds like it came out of a jam session (something that holds true for
a good deal of 'Electric Teepee' and IitBotFtbD, but that doesn't seem to
work well on those albums IMO), but they did great things with the jam
session in the studio!  I wish there was more recent Hawkwind that sounded
like that track, loose and weird ...

As a Hawkwind album, I never thought too highly of 'IitBotFtbD', but while
listening this weekend, I realized what it *really* is: a Richard Chadwick
solo album, with Brock & Davey on guest synths (and verrrry occasional
guitars).  The drumming on this album is phenomenal (completely the
opposite of 'Xenon Codex'), but, IMO, the only truly remarkable thing about
the album.  The Brock/Davey/Chadwick collaborations (title track, "Let
Barking Dogs Lie", "Avante") are perfect examples of this - lots of synth
noodling with some great drumming.  "Space is Their (Palestine)" goes on
for 2 or 3 times as long as it should ... but if Nik was playing flute on
it, it would be the perfect length (I would *highly* recommend listening to
this studio track and filling in some imaginary flute in your head ...
really!).  I still find the lack of guitar on the album disappointing (and
what's there sounds like too much aimless noodling to me) after all this
time, and even Alan's bass playing is mostly unremarkable (?!?).  The cover
of "Gimme Shelter" has got to be one of the most pointless things they ever
recorded (but it got me thinking - what if they had run short of the Brock
demo material used on 'PXR5' and had to put a live recording of "Waiting
For My Man" on that album instead?  That would've been interesting,
although perhaps pointless, too.); at least when you remember that it's a
Chadwick solo album, it makes sense.  Come to think of it, Richard's
co-written many of the best songs on the last two Hawkwind albums
("Wheels", "Hippy") ... perhaps a "real" solo album could be in the works
... (and this gives me high hopes for the Chadwick/Richards tour this
summer) ...

        -Doug
         ceres at sirius.com