HW: Brighton

[Gesticulates Very Expressively]

Well that went surprisingly well..

The Concorde II is a bit of an awkward shape but they pulled off the light
show OK. No problems at all with sound and the like, in fact the only
really distressing thing was the combination of silver lame shirt, green
sequinned hotpants and red tights...

I finally worked out what it is about Hawkwind's drums that's always
bothered me. It's taken a while because despite the fact that I *love*
drums, Hawkwind's have never managed to hold my attention long enough for
me to work out what's wrong.

The whole kit and the whole sound is subservient to the hi-hat and a reedy,
flat crash. Everything sounds like a reflection of these flat little
noises. The snare has this little snap with a fade on the end, that
wouldn't make it through warm butter, never mind the full band sound.
Comparing with Bedouin's drums, which I thought were fabulous, that snare
gives this great sharp crack with a lot of depth to it but a quick finish,
and the sound in the toms rolls around so much that when they were being
played very continuously at one point, I had to look to double check that
the lovely ringing bass note I could hear wasn't coming from anything
strung.
If i stop and pay attention i can hear that the drums are doing something
quite interesting in rhythm patterns, but it's odd because i know that
something that goes like *that* should fire me right up but it just doesn't
reach me. There was a bit in the middle of Assassins where that flat snare
sound was very well used, at a high enough frequency to get into happy
techno territory, and that made a lot more sense, but generally, the drums
freak me out because they don't get my attention at all, even though I
normally feel so directly connected to drums.
Nice to be able to identify it, anyway.