HW/NIK: new albums compared (was OFF: Dio, Maiden, etc.)

[Jonathan Jarrett]

On Tue, Sep 23, 2008 at 12:11:01PM +0100, M Holmes typed out:
> Jonathan Jarrett writes:
> > ObCD: Space Ritual - _Otherworld_, which I only just got and which is 
> > confusing me by being not bad enough that I'm not entirely certain it 
> > might not be good. A terrible string of negatives, but I was truly 
> > expecting it to suck, and it fails to do so. More on this I expect...
> I've quite liked it from the getgo. It's the only good thing Nik has
> done in I don't know how long. Maybe he can finally let go of Hawkwind
> and start producing some music again...

	It is good, isn't it? But I'm not sure Nik is to blame. If you 
have a good look at the writing credits, he's mostly there for words, 
but a lot of the words are words we've heard before, from Sphynx or ICU, 
`Time Crime', `Communique' and so on. The real new creative input seems 
to be coming from a guest, this Russell bloke, and, well, Dave Anderson. 
It's really Anderson's album, to read those credits anyway.

	The weird thing; it sounds so much more professionally produced 
than TMTYL. The material isn't as good, I think, I don't think that, 
beyond `Otherworld' itself and `Sonic Savages', there's any truly 
stand-out songs here, whereas TMTYL has several, especially `Sun Ray' 
and `Angela Android' but others as well. But it sounds so good overall 
that you could be fooled into thinking there were. It reminds me of when 
I saw the 21st Century Schizoid Band, who are King Crimson's kind of 
XHawkwind equivalent. They had some new material too, and it wasn't very 
interesting, but they knew so much about arrangements and general 
musical cunning that the essential drabness of their songs were very 
well disguised. Something similar here, and this is very strong evidence 
to my mind that HW should really stop producing records in a barn and 
Pro Tools... Yours,
		    Jon

-- 
"When fortune wanes, of what assistance are quantities of elephants?"
	    (Juvaini, Afghan Muslim chronicler, c. 1206)
 Jon Jarrett, Fitzwilliam Museum, jjarrett at chiark.greenend.org.uk