As has become customary, the mail order service from Cherry Red and album packaging from Atomhenge are exemplary. This album comes with a cardboard sleeve for the CD jewel case and a 24-page booklet, which I haven't read yet - but a quick shifty reveals it contains sleeve notes by Mark Powell, a few familiar period photos of the band, lyrics, credits and extra detail concerning provenance of the unreleased / bonus tracks. Which is very welcome, since I attempt to keep track of this stuff for hairy-arsed Hawkwind fans of posterity.
As is my normal practice I won't attempt to review (much) the original album, which comprises Disc 1, other than to note the enhanced audio quality. Familiar as this NWOBHM-inflected album is, I noticed some new things about it such as the rhythm guitar chording in the coda to Angels of Death, and how much this album is a duel between Dave Brock's brutal, overdriven riffing and Huw Lloyd-Langton's taut, glossy lead guitar. It might be the Hawkwind album that has more of Huw on it than any other. The contest between them extends beyond the arrangements to the songwriting, with Rocky Paths and Psychsonia exemplifying Huw's contribution while Angels of Death and Streets of Fear are in the mould of classic Brock numbers (not that the credits entirely bear this out). But Living On A Knife Edge and Lost Chances completely integrated these two very different styles.
The bonus tracks on Disc 2 open with the 7-inch single versions of Angels Of Death and Transdimensional Man, which aren't all that rare now. Angels Of Death in this format is most notable for fading out prematurely but Transdimensional Man is always welcome to the ear and was far too good to have been just the B-side of a single. Things get interesting with the 3rd track in, the "first version" of Sonic Attack. Of course the first version came out in 1972, featuring Bob Calvert's insouciant yet bleak vocal narration. This is not a patch on that, featuring Dave Brock denunciating the lyrics over a fairly pedestrian synth backing. He does all the usual things on this, mangling the word 'simultaneously' by pronouncing it as 'simewtaneously' and much is lost in the atmospherics by the narration of the words as if they were to be used for the famous four-minute warning of nuclear annihilation which inspired Michael Moorcock's lyrics. [An aside this, but I never believed the government would have made any attempt to warn the unwashed populace of armageddon. We would all have gone to a fiery Valhalla in blissful ignorance.] Of course the track Sonic Attack didn't really work on the original album for which it was named, either, where Harvey Bainbridge's stentorian exhortations over a rolling musical backing also paled in comparison to the relatively minimalist Calvert rendition. Brock's narration avoids the pitfall of overelaborating as Bainbridge's did, but both are missing the subtlety of Bob Calvert's arch, knowing delivery on the original 1972 version.
Out Of The Void is the next title on Disc 2. This is an instrumental piece, all keyboards over a galloping drum machine, which is recognisable as an embryonic take on one of the Church Of Hawkwind tracks, I think 'Experiment with Destiny'...which subsequently acquired a voiceover from Harvey Bainbridge along the lines of "People function...dreaming their dreams..." It's fairly brief and gives way to the extended version of Lost Chances. Which sounds like a completely different, rather than merely an extended version of the track, opening with a murky, swirly, flanged rhythm guitar and perhaps greater prominence awarded to the keyboard parts in the mix. Overall it comes across as a far more guitar vs. keyboards affair, with Harvey's swoops and arpeggios recalling the Stonehenge Decoded track that was to appear a couple of years later. The ending is different too, fading out with Huw warbling away.
The 'alternate version' of Streets of Fear is less hard-edged than the one that (rightly) made it onto the original album, but is otherwise not very different from what we already know. This one should be filed under the title of "an interesting stage in the evolution of a Hawkwind number." It does do another long slow fade with lots of Huw's lead guitar, which is starting to seem like a pattern on these bonus tracks. Except that Devilish Dirge (next up) is nothing like that - it, like Out Of The Void a couple of tracks back, is an early version of something that was to appear in final form on the Church Of Hawkwind album, namely the almost-title-track, 'The Church'. This one is a bit more thumpy -that drum machine again- with some buzzing, droning guitar accompanying the keyboard melody. The End Of Earth City is similar in that it prefigures The Fall Of Earth City from the Church Of Hawkwind album (it and Sonic Attack were recorded in the same sessions, after all) but offers a sonically murkier, softer signature than the final product. The version here has a less histrionic vocal delivery and a dreamlike faded coda which brings to mind the moves the band made on Paranoia way back on their first album.
The Speed Of Light is the name afforded to the demo version of Transdimensional Man, and it has a lighter, more keyboard-dominated arrangement that contrasts with dark, treated vocals. The keyboards go all interestingly vampish towards the close of the song, in a way that's almost jazzy. But the closing number, an extended version of Living On A Knife Edge resets the template that is now becoming discernable as the key to these bonus / unreleased tracks. It is longer than the version that appeared on the original Sonic Attack album, with an extended intro and some quite different sounding guitar - darker, mushier almost, and with greater depth of effects (flanging or phase-shifting, here). The song structure seems pretty much as the final version was to observe, with the extended instrumental middle section prefiguring the lovely coda. And then there is an extended section of this too, which is instrumental, and devolves into a staccato, understated resolution. Which is also the end of Disc 2.
One problem that Atomhenge have made for themselves is living up to the quality of some of their earlier resissues, and this one is not quite in the top tier, for my money. What it does do is present some hitherto unheard material that is notable more for how these songs developed than as titles that stand up on their own merit. Of course it is still a must have album for the serious Hawkwind fan. But you knew that already, didn't you :-)
Free Hawkwind Downloads <|> Resources <|> Other Features
News <|> Links <|> Search <|> Site Map <|> Home