HW: Nik thoughts

[Doug Pearson]

On Tue, 22 May 2001 09:17:18 -0400, Nick Medford <nick at HERMIT0.DEMON.CO.UK>
wrote:
>On the subject of Nik: what is the deal with "Nik's Space Ritual", "Past or
>Future", "Prophets Of Time" etc? Could anyone post comments on these
>albums... I'd like to hear them but I'm a bit too sceptical of the whole
>"Nik-rehashes-his-glorious-past...again" bit to just go out on a limb.

For better or worse, they're all "Nik-rehashes-his-past" albums.

'Space Ritual' I consider essential for Helios Creed's involvement
(including a couple of his songs alongside Nik's), but I've been a Chrome
fan for almost as long as I've been a Hawkwind fan.  As someone mentioned,
the version of "D-Rider" on this one is outstanding (possibly even better
than the HotMG version!).

'Past and Future' is pretty similar to 'Space Ritual', without Helios
Creed, but with Simon House & Al Powell.  The fact that these two albums
were recorded "live" with a "real" band (there's lots of drum machine on
the next two) puts them in the superior category for me.

'Prophets of Time' is all ICU remakes.  The original ICU versions are all
far superior EXCEPT for "Stonehenge Who Knows," by virtue of some
absolutely stunning violin work by Simon House.  I consider that track to
justify the price of admission, but I'm a huge Simon House fan, so keep
that in mind ...

I find that the 'Sphynx' remake pales compared to the
original 'Xitintoday', but some people feel otherwise, so YMMV.

The Dark Sun 'Ice Ritual' is another "live" album (which is a good thing),
and differs considerably from the two on Cleopatra in that the songs tend
to be fairly short (3-4 minutes), with little jamming.  OTOH, most of the
songs on P&F and SR run about 6-8 minutes each.  There are also some Brock
covers (and Rudolph's "Hassan i Sahba") on this one, done by Dark Sun
WITHOUT Nik.

And then there's 5:15's version of "Silver Machine" ...

    -Doug
     jasret at mindspring.com