NIK: new album

[Stephan Forstner]

   And Nik & Co. are first out of the gate with a new release on
OzIt/Morpheus. Due to the current dust-up between the Chaos Armies (and
because it is explicitly mentioned on the disc) this is going to have to be
judged at least partially in context with the unpleasant events taking place
between the two camps, and undoubtedly my own opinions on that topic as well
as those pertaining to the CD itself are going to conflict with those of
others here, so caveats out of the way, here goes.

   While the "2001 Space Rock Odessey" set had sub-par bootleg quality sound
for most of its length and was wrapped in a professional looking package,
this time around it's almost the opposite. The packaging is very bootleggy,
a CD-R with pasted on label, front insert printed on only 1 side of the
paper, and no catalog # or barcode anywhere, though the OzIt/Morpheus logo
does appear on both the front and back artwork. That said, the artwork
itself is fine, colorful shots of the band members and the stage. The sound
is much better than the bulk of 2001, but still not very professional, with
a sub-optimal mix, though in its favor you can say that it's far from the
over-processed slickness of Yule Ritual. Aside from the mix, this does begin
to approach what a no-frills live recording should sound like IMHO, if not
for some annoyances caused by sloppy mastering/editing. So overall lets call
it even, no points plus or minus.

   The spine says "SPACE RITUAL.NET Live at Glastonbury and Guildford 2002".
On the cover in large letters it says "SPACE RITUAL.NET" and in much smaller
letters underneath it says "featuring ex-members of Hawkwind". Worth a
point. Further down, still in smaller type, it says "Live at Glastonbury and
Guildford Festival, 2002 - Includes new material featuring seventies members
of Hawkwind: Nik Turner, Terry Ollis, Mick Slattery and Thomas Crimble".

Tracks are:
1) Orion Sunrise (1:25) bit of jam from the end of Brainstorm. Segues into
2) The Awakening (4:18) more jam w/ Nik doing the Calvert poem at the start
- there is a loud burst right at the beginning (glitch, static, mastering
problem, I don't know what it is but it's annoying and it doesn't belong
there - minus point). Segues into
3) Osiris (10:19) another jamming piece that turns into Thoth at the end (or
the lyrics do anyway). There is a very distracting bit of clumsy editing
here, with a 70 second chunk copied from near the middle of the piece and
duplicated/dropped in near the beginning, no idea why this was done - minus
point. Segues into
4) The Landing (4:02) Some new (few) lyrics recited over more jamming, real
stretch to call it an actual song, but it is new - plus point. Goes into the
next track a bit abruptly, probably an edit.
5) Blue Train (7:04) by John Coltrane. Surprisingly good and something new
(in this context) - plus point. Fade out.
6) Space Grab (8:21) fade in into a great space jam. Could be the middle bit
of any one of a number of songs, but this is great stuff. More points. Fade out.
7) Thunder Rider Rap (2:04) plus band intros, over Silver Machine riffing.
Segues into
8) Warp Out (5:29) another good space jam loosely hung on the Silver Machine
riff. Fade out.
9) D-Rider (11:02) decent laid-back version. At the end, Nik bitches about
Dave Brock and the lawsuit, lose a point, negate point from the cover wording.

   Special mention to Mick Slattery's lead guitar, he puts in a great
performance here, more plus points.

   Overall, this makes me think of HW's Zones album - not done very
professionally, containing a bit of new stuff, OK for current fans, unlikely
to bring in new fans. However, despite the problems, there is enough good
stuff on here to make me like it, and recommend it, maybe most importantly
for the potential this displays. With all its shortcomings, I think this
disc is actually solid proof that Nik & Co. have it in them to produce not
just a good jamming space-rock album, but a GREAT jamming space-rock album,
one that could sit up there with the classics of space/psych/kraut rock. If
you don't believe me, just listen again to Space Grab, or parts of Blue
Train, or various short or longer stretches scattered throughout.

   In my completely ignorant and uninformed opinion, what they might need to
produce such a great album would amount to basically 2 things in combination
- 1) proper recording equipment, and someone who knows how to use it, as
well as possibly acting as a producer-type person who could whip things into
shape, which leads to requirement 2) some discipline from Nik and his
musicians - or possibly just 1 of these 2 things, provided they REALLY went
all-out on that one. The problem is that 1) requires money, and 2) requires,
well, discipline from Nik and his musicians. If they concentrated on 2) they
could almost certainly come up with something on their own, but by their own
admission, they're there to have fun, to invoke the spirit of early HW, not
to actually do anything new, so maybe they just don't WANT to do this. They
obviously are getting really good at working through jams together, so w/o
going overboard they'd just need some kind of minimal framework to hang
those jams around. And they really need some kind of proper recording
equipment, whether they want to be recorded live or in the studio, and
someone who can edit/splice/mix tapes, because its done pretty amateurishly
here. Alternately, they forget 2) altogether and concentrate on 1) - record
lots and lots of jamming material and have someone who knows what he's doing
reassemble the tapes, a la Teo Macero (and Bill Laswell) for Miles Davis.
Problem there is who's going to do it? More to the point, who's going to do
it for no money? Well, I very much hope that they DO do something, because
I'll repeat, there is a whole lot of potential on display here.

Stephan

P.S. Speaking of HW's Zones, I have ordered all 4 of the new HW remasters
and when they get here and I get the time I will do a comparision of sound
and artwork that I will post to the list in hopes of offering some idea as
to whether or not they are worth the purchase.

P.P.S. Completely unrelated, I just learned, and maybe some KC fans could
verify this, that original King Crimson band-members Giles / Giles /
McDonald / Collins are playing together, doing both old and new stuff, and
were supposed to debut at Canterbury 2002 at the end of August, performing
under the name "21st Century Schizoid Band". Note they did NOT reform as
"Xing Crimson".