HW: _Spacebrock_

[Jon Jarrett]

        Dear All,
                  a review I wrote which will be going up on that BBS I
mentioned last time... Forgive the notes for those who don't know much
about HW.

Subject: Hawkwind - _Spacebrock_

        "This is now the latest Hawkwind album, although up until a few
months ago it was supposed to be Dave Brock's _Hawkwind Brockspace_ and
before that it was titled _Sex Dreams_. What Dave Brock, Hawkwind's only
remaining original member and at times the only person you can safely say
is in the group, is up to is therefore anyones guess but what it all means
is that this is in fact a Brock solo album under the Hawkwind label. Now,
Brock isn't the same as Hawkwind no matter what fans will say - Hawkwind
has always been a rock group in some form or other, even if its
contribution to electronica has not been minor, but Brock, as is clear
from interviews, thinks of himself primarily as an electronic musician
these days, a player of synth and sequencer rather than a guitarist (which
he also still is).

        "Furthermore, a lot of the stuff on here has come out before which
makes me suspicious that the material for a Brock retrospective called
_`76-`96_ that never appeared has been recycled. In two cases this is
perhaps forgivable - `Life Form', the opener, is not only good as far as
synth stuff goes but is from the long-OOP _P.X.R.5_; similarly `Burn Me
Up', another of Brock's better songs under his own name, is on an obscure
compilation which only the real fan has, and maybe it deserved better
exposure: it has also had an extra synth line added which does enhance it
slightly. Even `Some People Never Die', which is actually a very good
proto-techno track, is on the OOP _Church of Hawkwind_, although it did
come out on the shiny nice official _Epoch-Eclipse_ compilation only last
year. But this isn't true of all of it. `Kauai' is not a great piece of
synth atmospheric, and it was released on _Distant Horizons_, last album
but one. `1st Landing' is based on a poem of Robert Calvert's which
Hawkwind used to perform as a spoken-word track, called `The
Awakening'. It came out on the last album, _In Your Area_, reworked as
`1st Landing on Medusa, which was the title of another of Calvert's poems,
none of whose words were included. Dave Brock performed this at the
Hawkestra anniversary gig in September with that poem tacked on the end,
as one connected piece, and here the lyrics are given for both
halves. What's actually on the CD is however exactly the same piece as on
_In Your Area_, for which I can't see any excuse.

        "So, there's one third of the album written off already. Next (not
in order but in the reviewers mind) comes the more creative
recycling: `The Right Way' is the extra synth line and sample added to
`Burn Me Up' repeated twice, and `To Be Or Not' is the sample and Dave's
half of the backing to a sequencer track from 1995's _Alien4_, `Kapal',
with new stuff added over the top. 10 tracks remaining then and so far
only two new synth lines and a few samples that are actually new.

        "Then, there are two things which look like recycling but
arent. `Earth Calling' was the title of an atmospheric intro Hawkwind used
in the early 70s, and here is something under that name, but it's entirely
new apart from the one line, `This is Earth calling' - moreover it has a
riff, and a good one, which really picks up your hopes before
disintegrating into randomness and electronic burbling after a minute and
a half. But still, a flash of the good stuff. `The Journey' is also
unrelated to the track of the same name from _Alien4_ and is thankfully
not as clunky and ill-formed as that one either though its otherwise
unmemorable sequencer patterning.

        "There is then a small cluster of what I think of as typical solo
Brock. The song fades in, sets up its patterns as they swirl out of the
generator noise, and develops vocals about otherworldly romance, then it
sort of slows to a halt at the bridge and chunters off again once the
patterns are allowed to resume and fades out. `Burn Me Up' is I feel about
as good as solo Brock gets, and though it's often entertaining to work on
what he is trying to get across in the songs (`Dreamers' here is scripted
in the liner, with stage directions for how to interpret the virtuoso
lines, one of which isn't actually audible), I'm not prepared to say I
like them more than a little bit. `Sex Dreams' and `Do You Want this
Body?' are towards the techno end of Brock's work, and I quite like `Sex
Dreams' as far as it goes, which is a sample and some patterns which blend
quite nicely. The latter is inoffensive. `Space Pilots' is someone else's
techno work; whoever `Liquid Groove' may be (s)he gets the credit for all
work on the song in the liner (so whats it doing here? is it a Hawkwind
member under a pseudonym? If so who?), and that's more `fashionable' but
still nothing special.

        "Three tracks left, then, all clustered together on the
disk. First, `The Starkness of the Capsule', is referencing a line from
`The Awakening' but is otherwise different, and is marked in the liner as
`Pressing You'. It is an odd track, not so much musically, though it's
definitely one of Brock's more experimental tracks, without a particular
structure, but it's the vocals - they're wild. It must be Dave but it
sounds unearthly. This is good stuff. But its followed by `Behind the
Face', and for oddness this just leaves the rest behind. Odd words from I
think two different perspectives, varying from theatrical to inaudible -
vaguely reggae synth lines with vocals wandering all over the place -
layered over with quite appalling violin played that way for effect. What
is he on about? What is he *on*? This is a track which I cannot get near,
and anyone else's opinion will probably be more use. And then, at last,
13th out of 17, `Space Brock', a genuine authentic space-rock blanga
piece! Riffs, swoosh, sparkly lead guitar (Dave can actually play if you
leave him alone and don't expect him to do it in front of people), its
very good! Not great maybe but a worthy addition to anyone's collection
and better than much else, that's for sure.

        "But, do two very good tracks, another half of one, a couple of
techno pieces, four songs-to-order and a truly odd piece of reggae,
combined with a mini-Brock-best-of, an album make? Well, I'd say no,
really. Certainly not a Hawkwind one. One asks oneself have there been
worse Hawkwind albums, and really, only _In Your Area_ springs to mind and
that has some pretty good live stuff on it. It's hard to say any of it's
bad, but most of it isn't very interesting, and it hangs together very
badly. `Spacebrock', `Starkness' and `Earth Calling' are good stuff and
with `Sex Dreams' and a couple of other bits, dragged out, would have been
worth the price of entry if they were all it was, short but good. The
extra stuff is filler, and it damps down the whole package. That package
does come with a cool liner, and what I've finally decided is a top cover,
but still. I'll only give it one more for that. 10/20"




--
     Jon Jarrett (01223 514989)       jjarrett at chiark.greenend.org.uk
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        "There's nothin' more dangerous than a wounded mosquito."