HW: Re: Hawkwind Onward

[Horse]

Does anyone out there remember the name of the guy that inspired the 
lyrics to 'Right To Decide'? I think he shot a council member over some 
planning permission incident.
I seem to remember that the band got a lot of stick for supporting him 
when they issued it the first time round.

Cheers

Horse


On 11/08/2012 15:57, Jonathan Jarrett wrote:
> On Wed, 9 May 2012, SHLL (Scott Heller) wrote:
>> I am really surprised that there has been no discussion of the new 
>> Hawkwind record. I still don't have mine but some of you out there 
>> must have it by now... What do people think compared to Blood of the 
>> Earth?? Has anyone heard the vinyl? They did a terrible job on the 
>> mastering of the vinyl on the last one, sound was very muddy (way too 
>> much low end) compared to the CD sound. Hope they sort this one out. 
>> I have not bought the vinyl yet as I don't listen to the last one on 
>> vinyl due to the sound issues.
>>
>> Anyway, I really look forward to hearing it and digging into the 
>> songs...
>
> I actually only got hold of this album in the last couple of weeks, 
> which is a bit poor for a fan I know. I'd been much encouraged by the 
> two tracks I'd heard on Aural Innovations webcasts, and I now realise 
> that in some ways those were the two tracks I was most likely to like 
> (`Seasons' and the hidden track). But I've given it several spins 
> now--I got the expanded edition--and have some opinions, if anyone 
> wants 'em. Overall, though, my current verdict is that I actually like 
> this album better than _Blood of the Earth_ but can't easily explain 
> why since I think the production is unhelpfully dense and that there 
> are fewer stand-
> out tracks. It just seems like a coherent piece of work by a band that 
> knew what it was after. That, also, seems strange when one looks at 
> who was on the tracks and realises that, for example, Tim Blake's 
> hardly there outside the tracks he wrote parts for, Dibs only gets two 
> writing credits even though he seems omni-present and there's a 
> sizeable part of the album which is all-or-mostly-Dave and which 
> doesn't sound radically different to the rest even so. So my first 
> impression was that this seems like a genuinely active and coherent 
> band, and that looking as it to see whether or not this is `proper 
> Hawkwind' or not is not going to be the right way to listen to it. 
> It's obviously what the band called Hawkwind is doing now.
>
> So, track-by-track? `Seasons' is to my ear mainly Dibs's work but 
> Richard actually gets lead credit so what do I know? Intense, fast and 
> hostile; the dense production actually an advantage here, and 
> definitely a highlight that makes one eager to hear more.
>
> `The Hills Have Ears'--a doomful Gaia-hypothesis prophecy on which 
> Niall gets lead credit, in which case he should do that more often. 
> The words aren't great but contain a Chrome reference, unexpected but 
> pleasing. On the whole this is no drop in quality from the beginning.
>
> `Mind Cut'--all Brock, words music and playing, and none too bad but 
> neither is it stand-out among his work. We've kind of heard this 
> before, and the words are rather basic. (I care about this more as I 
> get older.)
>
> `System Check'--a `Psychosis'-style spaceship radio exchange, in which 
> Tim massively over-acts compared to the rest of the crew, bless him. 
> Entertaining filler.
>
> `Death Trap'--retread, obviously, but really quite good, up with the 
> _Alien4_ version as a justifiable rework and identifiably, as I say, a 
> different band; this is the point at which I came to the realisation 
> about this line-up's coherence that I set out above.
>
> `Southern Cross'--Tim's track, but it sounds like a Hawkwind one all 
> the same, and better-than-entertaining instrumental filler.
>
> `Prophecy'--Brock track with only him, Niall and Richard on the 
> recording. Again lyrics not the strong point but reasonably mantric, 
> which forgives that a bit; all the same this isn't a high point.
>
> `Electric Tears'/`Drive By'--technically two tracks but I can't detect 
> the separation between them without watching the CD player's display, 
> despite the fact that the line-ups differ, first being just date and 
> the latter being the trio from `Prophecy' again. The bit I think of as 
> `Drive By' is a bit like `Taxi for Max' would have been if they'd 
> stopped and completely rethought how to do something fun in that 
> general frame. There's more thought generally in this pair than most 
> of Hawkwind's synth interludes but they're very short.
>
> `Computer Cowards'--just Dave and Richard, and the lyrics uniquely not 
> given in the sleeve. They're not hard to figure out: Dave doesn't like 
> people sniping on the Internet and wishes them an evil fate. Hi Dave! 
> It's in the vein of `Behind the Face' from _Spacebrock_ or `Comfy 
> Chair' but darker, meaner and more musically repetitive, not that I 
> mean that in a bad way. This is Dave's dark side coming out!
>
> `Howling Moon'--Brock solo and I've not really anything major to say 
> about it. Probably the least impressive piece of music on the discs.
>
> `Right to Decide'--a bonus track, and well, yes, it's about the same 
> as ever it was but with the sound of this new line-up, except in as 
> much as it's the 2008 line-up with Jason Stuart also aboard. I quite 
> liked Jason live but here the plinkety piano adds something 
> dangerously like Rockney to the feel of things, something I think only 
> `Brainbox Pollution' really copes with in the Hawkwind catalogue. 
> Still a good song but rightly relegated to bonus-ville here.
>
> `Aerospaceage Inferno'--another bonus with that same line-up, and here 
> again I don't find the piano much of a bonus. The lyrics are printed 
> here, for some reason, whereas none of the other songs from before get 
> this privilege; there's also a middle-eight poem from Dibs, or at 
> least he recites it and it has his general flavour, about a bad 
> re-entry by a spacecraft, which reads quite lamely on the page but 
> which works very well in the setting of the bigger track, and 
> definitely adds something. It's a good version but still, 
> plinkety-plink, I can't look back on that as a good idea however good 
> Jason was at it.
>
> `The Flowering of the Rose'--instrumental jam by the 2008 line-up 
> again, and this one quite fun, think `Flight to Maputo' or `Going to 
> Hawaii' or `Only Time Will Tell' but with a bit more going on that's 
> melodic. I'm glad to have got this in the package.
>
> `Trans Air Trucking'--a Brock-Blake joint effort, with only them 
> playing, Tim on bass as well as keys, and instrumental. I was hoping 
> for a bit more life and bounce from it given the title, I'd kind of 
> like to see the title taken off it and saved for something else as 
> there isn't so much going on here. Pleasant enough!
>
> `Deep Vents'--Brock solo piece, but weirdly like one of Alan's pieces 
> from the early nineties. Could have done with being longer! I like 
> these noises and would cheerfully have had more of them.
>
> `Green Finned Demon'--the Brock-Hone-Chadwick trio here and a 
> perfectly good version, but it's hard to say it really adds anything 
> to the song that we didn't have in other versions. By the end of this 
> album it's hard not to think that they powered it out so quickly that 
> they couldn't come up with enough conventional songs so resorted to 
> retreads to space out the synth work and poems.
>
> And then there's the hidden track, whose name I would like to know 
> because it's really quite good, lyrics not unlike `Blood of the Earth' 
> and ploughing the same kind of high-octane apocalypticism as `Seasons' 
> at the beginning. I suspect Dibs and Niall of being to the fore on 
> this one, and in general I don't understand why this one's a secret, 
> it should be a matter for pride. Excellent closer.
>
> So, there's some filler I think and I question the need for two 
> retreads (in fact I question the need for one but the `Death Trap' is 
> so good I will forgive it) but I'm very happy to have them still 
> active and *sounding like a band*. If they turned out another of this 
> standard in eighteen months that would be a cause for celebration I 
> reckon. So, there you go Scott, some thoughts :-) Yours all,
> Jon
>

-- 

"Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid."
— Frank Zappa