OFF: style of Hillage music?

[Nick Medford]

Pretty comprehensive post from Keith, I just have a few footnotes to add:

In message <200112051840.NAA12514 at mail6.uts.ohio-state.edu>, K
Henderson <henderson.120 at OSU.EDU> writes

>'L' was (I think) his third solo album

Second, after 'Fish Rising'. 'Green' I think was the fourth, after 'Motivation
Radio'.

>'Fish Rising' featured much of Gong

Everyone except Daevid and Gilli I think.

>, and is a great album IMHO,

Yup, probably his best, although L and Rainbow Dome Music are very good
too.

>
>'Green' is very earthy and full of warm synthetic sounds and heaps of the
>old vocoder trick.  Miquette does a lot of the space whispery vocals here.
>Cheesy at times,

It's patchy for sure, but interesting because it's his most varied album. The
others tend to have a well-defined sound but 'Green' ranges from electro, to
acoustic guitar, to full-on trance-rock (although the "Om Riff" track is really
just an inferior remake of Gong's "Master Builder").

>'L' was his most popular solo release I think, and had some very eastern
>flavors (a nod or two to George Harrison RIP).

Including a fine cover of Harrison's "It's All Too Much".

>  And a companion piece of
>sorts to an earlier one on Fish Rising...Lunar Musick Suite to Solar Musick
>Suite, whichever way they went I can't remember.

Solar on FR, Lunar on L. Two of his best pieces for sure.

>'Motivation Radio'

OK, well AFAIK this is actually the third, though not totally sure about
that. But anyway this brings me to my main point- it's on this album that
what is IMHO a serious problem arises- the lyrics become unbearably awful.
Prior to this there was always a tendency for him to write cod-mystical, new-
agey stuff, but it's generally tolerable even if it's not to one's taste, but from
hereon in he becomes both twee and evangelical, and for me anyway it
overwhelms any merit in the music. The best tracks on this album are in
any case done much better on 'Live Herald'.

>'Open' is probably next, and went way over to the jazz-funk sort of style.

And the lyrics get even worse. The funky tracks are pretty lame on the
whole, although I have a soft spot for "Don't Dither Do It", as I once had a
peculiar dream in which this song was featured! But I digress... there's an
excellent Arabic-style instrumental called "Earthrise", and arguably the
album is worth having just for that alone.

>I'm not sure when 'Live Herald' was released, but it was probably recorded
>around the 'Motivation Radio' period

Yup

> is a very good document of Steve's music in a much more
>rock-out style.

Indeed, and includes contributions from future HW drummer Andy
Anderson.
>
>That was three sides live, with a fourth side (five tracks?)

I think it's only four, though I don't have it here to check.

>  In the CD age, the three
>live sides of 'Live Herald' went onto one CD by itself

And you don't miss much by not having the studio tracks IMHO, although
"Healing Feeling" is a nice mellow ambient piece in the vein of "Rainbow
Dome Music".

>I think somewhere here is his 'Glorious Om Riff' which is Gong's "Master
>Builder" in disguise.

No, that's on Open (see above).

>
>So we're around 1979, and 'Rainbow Dome Musick' is from about then, which
>was a pair of full-side ambient works

It was  apparently commissioned for the festival of Mind-Body-Spirit, an
annual (I think) event with a New Age bias, which was at that time held at
the Rainbow Dome, a venue in London. In fact 1979 may have been the
first one, I'm not sure. Anyway this is an excellent album that proved
enormously influential on the subsequent ambient scene. Alex Paterson of
the Orb used to play it in his days as a chill-out DJ and apparently it was
instrumental in inspiring him to create the Orb. He apparently met Hillage
when the latter discovered Paterson was playing RDM at some club and
went down to investigate. This meeting led to Hillage's work with the Orb
and probably helped kick-start System 7. It also meant that Hillage, one of
the most unfashionable figures in British music, suddenly became a trendy
name to drop, which was quite amusing.

>Jump to '81-'82,

>  'And Not Or'

Never heard this one

> 'For to Next' is mainly
>electronic-pop tunes with a few major stinkers.

Has one superb song- the forbidding electro of "These Uncharted Lands",
otherwise it's weak early 80s synth-pop as you say.

> Hillage then went into the electronic/dance community
>never to re-emerge. System7 is virtually all boring techno music

I like some trance-techno but what I've heard of System 7 hasn't impressed
me- it's beautifully produced but poppy and uninspired. Possibly I haven't
heard the better stuff though- I'm basing that mainly on the first album, the
only one I actually have, which was a major disappointment- I bought it in
the conviction it would be a masterpiece of old-style psych fused with new
technology and rhythms, and it's nothing of the sort. But I did see System 7
live once and they were far better live than on record, there was even a
guitar played on occasion! Steve's partner Miquette Giraudy actually seems
to have more of the writing credits for the Sys 7 stuff and she looked
expert on synths/electronics when I saw them live.

I don't know what the situation between Steve and his former Gong
colleagues is, but he was a notable absentee at the 25th birthday reunion
gigs, although he did remix one track on the "You Remixed" double CD.
Daevid Allen was then quoted as saying he wasn't that impressed with
Steve's contribution and thought it was one of the least interesting tracks on
that album (he said it in a nice way of course, I'm paraphrasing). So make of
that what you will!
--
Nick Medford