Music from the Hawkwind family tree

Music from the Hawkwind family tree - Part 6

Many thanks to Graham who penned this piece

Some of the best: Bedouin - As Above, So Below

In 2001, Bedouin were Alan Davey, Danny Thompson and Glen Povey, with Simon House guesting on violin.

Alan Davey’s vocals are still somewhat strained (he tries too hard to emulate Lemmy’s inimitable gravel voiced singing) but the playing is excellent, with a much tighter feel than the rather limp solo performances on “Bedouin”. Bedouin are a sort of space-rock version of Motorhead (not surprising really, given that their alter ego is a Motorhead tribute act). One minor gripe is the lyrical content – great titles and portentious sounding lines (“flying into your dreams, object of desire, unidentified zeal, higher and higher” – from the title track) but I’m not sure what any of the songs is actually about: Jon Anderson would be proud of Alan’s work here!

The album opens with four consecutive high energy heavy rock numbers: “Vision Quest”, “Say Goodbye Da Babylon”, “Rock Palace” (originally from the “Bedouin” album and revisited by the band) and the excellent “As Above So Below”. Two instrumentals follow: after being bludgeoned into submission by the opening four tracks, the well-named “Air Space” provides a brief respite, before more heavy riffing on “Dagger Dance”. “Demons In Denial” and the powerful “Chasing The Dragon” close the album.

This is as close to mainstream (latter day) Hawkwind as any of the various solo offshoots gets. The album was released on Salahadin Records (CD001) in 2001.

Worth A Listen: Alan Davey – Bedouin

On this album, Alan Davey is accompanied by Danny Thompson (track 6 only) and Sean Massett (tracks 1, 2, 3 and 7). I think the main problem I have with this is that it sounds like Hawkwind-by-numbers or, to be more precise, like Alan Davey playing along with a drum machine on various instruments. At this stage, Bedouin was an idea more than a band and this album misses the dynamics and feel of a real band. In fact, of the five tracks on which other musicians accompany him, Alan Davey plays only synths on three of them (tracks 1, 2 and 6). For my tastes there are three pretty good tracks (“One Moon Circles”, “Queen Of The Night” and “Sand Devil”) and the rest is well-executed but rather forgettable.

The album kicks off with the full-on assault of “Rock Palace”, followed by the instrumental “Wadi Dhar”, which starts out very laid back (make that comatose) and then gains a rhythm track and repetitive synth

motif over which Sean Massett lays down some soloing on guitar, finally slowing right back down to finish after 11 minutes. “Passion Is An Animal” picks up the pace again but Alan Davey is not an effective singer and, perhaps because this is just Alan overdubbed and playing to a drum machine, it lacks any sense of dynamics. “Alhadan” starts out as another laid back synth piece before some Arabic sounding strumming and vocal samples come in. “Space Rock Café” is a faster instrumental, propelled along by Alan’s bass work; in places it is reminiscent of “Valium 10”.

“One Moon Circle” is a Davey / Thompson collaboration, featuring real drums and percussion and some pleasant synth doodles from Alan. Best track so far. “Queen Of The Night” is the only track to feature Alan Davey playing bass to accompany Sean Massett on guitar – although they’re still playing to a drum machine (and Alan’s singing is still far from wonderful), this track has an energy lacking elsewhere on the album and gets closest to classic Hawkwind.

“Eyes In The Dark” is another atmospheric but directionless instrumental with sampled voices, which suddenly wakes up after 5 ½ minutes as Alan starts playing some bass and rhythm guitar. The closing “Sand Devil” brings things to a rousing finish, with Alan again playing bass and guitar. Apparently this last track was recorded in 1987, which has the unfortunate effect of implying that he hasn’t really progressed much since then!

The album was released on EBS in 1997 (EBSCD 133).

Worth A Listen: The Alman Mulo Band – Orisha

The Alman Mulo Band was Harvey Bainbridge (synths, vocals, guitar, bass) plus Norman Alman (percussion, vocals, guitar).

There are probably two reasons for preferring this album to some other largely instrumental albums by Hawkwind alumni, like Harvey’s own “Interstellar Chaos” or the Paradogs’ “Foul Play at the Earth Lab”: firstly it’s quite pleasant to listen to and, secondly, it doesn’t seem to take itself too seriously.

“Electronique” is light and bouncy, more Jean-Michel Jarre than Tangerine Dream, while “Too Late” is a rather statelier instrumental, meandering tastefully for 11 and a half minutes. “A Touch Like Ice” is slightly more sombre, with some treated voices and pleasantly melancholy instrumentation. “Get Up!” is basically a percussion exercise with chanted vocals, repeating the words of the title and such like – pointless but

harmless!

“Choko Drives In” is familiar, under its alternative title “Toad On The Road”, from the Friends and Relations album. It remains an inoffensive but inconsequential song, with some spoken Spanish thrown into the mix. “Antario” (or, as implied by the lyrics, “Antonio”) is another upbeat track with a rather ridiculous spoken vocal about Antonio, “the coolest cat in Bonio”. You could imagine The Shamen turning this into an exceptionally irritating rap; as done by Harvey and Norman it’s just mildly amusing. “Old Man From Japan” is another silly rap, over within 2 minutes. “Partie d’Afrique / Automind” starts out as a percussion workout with “African” vocals before turning into another light and bubbly synth-based piece with an incomprehensible vocal (plus backing vocals courtesy of Sue Newman).

Lasting for 50 minutes in total, this album is largely undemanding and doesn’t outstay its welcome. Originally issued on cassette, the CD (TASTE 37) was released in 1997.

Worth A Listen: Robert Calvert – Revenge

This mini-album of demos is a posthumous release of fragments of Robert Calvert’s otherwise unreleased work. What happened here was Pete Pavli (who played cello on “New World’s Fair” and bass for High Tide) produced some demos, then Bob wrote and sung the words. This was their second collaboration, the first being on the “Hype” album.

There is only about 10 minutes of Calvert music here. The sound quality isn’t great, as you might expect from demos – it actually sounds better on my PC than on the hi-fi. The playing time is doubled by the inclusion of an unnamed track of synthesised voice (“Turn The Tape Over”) and minimalist synth, repeated over and over for 10 minutes - your cat has probably composed better music!

However, the 10 minutes of Calvert is good. None of

the demo backing tracks was especially exciting but, in each case, Calvert’s words and performance fit perfectly and his imagery is as powerful as ever, even on what are essentially minor works.

Pick of the bunch is the title track, on which Bob Calvert offers a lovely vignette of a lone gunman taking revenge on unnamed enemies, over a backdrop of cello and keyboards. The closest reference point I could think of was “Only The Dead Dreams Of The Cold War Kid” but this is actually better. The rather florid cello and keyboards arrangement of “Isadora” had me expecting to hear the late Viv Stanshall telling one of his stories of Sir Henry at Rawlinson End. Calvert nevertheless turns in another good performance, singing about girls on a stage, windscreen wipers and trees – the link, by the way, is that they are all dancing. The remaining two tracks are less immediately appealing, although the lyrics are better than the music. On “Fascism / Futurism” he talks about burning libraries and the like for two minutes, while “Bugatti” concerns, as you might guess, driving a Bugatti (sample lyrics: “burning like a meteor, through the letterbox of heaven’s door”).

This was released on Blueprint (Voiceprint) as BP320CD in 1999. Now we just need someone to release his recitations of the “Centigrade 232” and “Earth Ritual” poems…

Worth A Listen: Robert Calvert – Hype

This is the album of the novel (the paperback occasionally turns up on E-Bay) and it’s not bad except that Calvert just doesn’t convince as the sleazy rock star, Tom Mahler, whose songs we are supposedly hearing. The band on this album comprises Simon House, Nik Turner, Michael Moorcock, Trev Thoms, Pete Pavli, George Csapo, Pete Dowling and Nick Michaels. The last three were three-quarters of Bethnal (“punks with a violin”), who supported Hawkwind on tour in 1977. [No bass player is credited].

The music, far from being sleazy rock, is poppy, with arrangements dominated by syn-drums and synths; quite appropriate for 1980 and a big stylistic leap away from “Lucky Leif”. Trev Thoms plays lead guitar but the arrangements keep his punk and metal tendencies firmly reigned in. Even Nik Turner’s playing is generally restrained. Anyway, forget about it being

“Songs of Tom Mahler” and treat it as songs of Bob Calvert: put away preconceptions and enjoy. Perhaps his third best album (after Captain Lockheed and Die Lösung)

The best track on the album is probably “Evil Rock”, which has been described elsewhere as Calvert’s “It’s Only Rock’n’Roll” (the lyrics of which are echoed in the closing refrain of “it’s evil, but I like it”). This track is more guitar rock than electronica, with Nik Turner contributing a suitably dirty sax solo. Now this song might just have worked as a hit single…

The original LP and CD closed with (reworked?) versions of both sides of the insect-themed single “Lord Of The Hornets” / “Greenfly And The Rose” – neither of which really seems to fit the concept of the album. The new CD re-issue (Voiceprint VP261CD, 2003) adds two demos (“Over My Head”, “Flight 105”) and an alternative version of “Hanging Out On The Sea Front”.

Worth A Listen: Anubian Lights – Eternal Sky

In which the Space Ritual (USA) crew does ambient electronica. This is basically Len Del Rio and Tommy Greñas (as in Pressurehed, Chrome, Farflung, Spiral Realms, etc, etc), plus Nik Turner, Del Dettmar, Simon House, Paul Fox, Doran Shelley and Brandon LaBelle.

The concept is Egyptian myth meets flying saucers (Eric Von Daniken territory in other words); the CD booklet comes complete with a four-page logbook. Sample: “The tall one, through a series of disjointed mumbles rose to crystal clarity and pronounced that after many years of battle with the dark drone lords, he had gone to the Great Pyramid to test out his instruments of chaos”. This bit at least seems to be a thinly disguised mythologizing of Nik’s departure from the mothership. The rest is a bit like “Time of the Hawklords” but nothing like as readable and without the humour. I tried reading it through three times and

it defeated me.

The music itself meanders along pleasingly enough, with eleven tracks of synths, percussion and eastern flavoured instrumental touches, plus Nik talking over top in places. Only “Grid Coordinate: Vorp One” (track 4) really grabbed my attention, when it hit a sequenced groove, before the album reverted back to providing relaxing ambient background music. Appropriately enough, this was released on Cleopatra’s “Hypnotic” division (CLEO96032), in 1995. The Hawkwind connection disappears on later albums but this one is worth checking out.

Approach With Caution: Dark Sun featuring Nik Turner – Ice Ritual

Well, this is a novel idea: Nik Turner teams up with a space rock band and plays a set of Hawkwind covers. Fair enough, it has worked before but this moves into karaoke territory.

I’d never heard of Dark Sun but, according to their web site www.darksunband.com, this was their third release. The earlier “Electric Dreams” promo featured Nik Turner on one track (which is included here) and they have subsequently had tracks released on four different compilations, including another track with Nik (“Abduction Files”) on “Not Of This Earth”.

This album actually mixes some live performances with Nik in 1999 with a set of Hawkwind covers from 1998. Although the sequence on the CD mixes performances from both sets, I’ll review them separately since only Nik’s contributions are of any real interest.

Focussing first on the 1999 material, Nik recites “Sonic Attack” effectively enough and the band then turns in a decent version of “Watching The Grass Grow”. “Kadu Flyer” is spoiled by some pretty awful vocals from Nik, although his sax playing is fine. Nik then recites “Utopia ‘84” and the band play a medley of “D-Rider”/”The Right Stuff”/”Master Of The Universe”. “D-Rider” works well, with vocals and flute from Nik; “The Right Stuff” is instrumentally good but with rather wayward vocals from Nik, and “Master Of The Universe” is excellent, with Nik contributing sax and vocals, and using the words from (I think) ICU’s version on “Passout”. The last track featuring Nik is “Brainstorm”, which is suitably wild, if brief, with some good sax work from Nik.

The 1998 material kicks off with a so-so version of “Psychedelic Warlords”. However, the band then dare to tackle “Assault and Battery” / “The Golden Void”. Hawkwind fans are perhaps best advised to skip these tracks: the music is played fairly faithfully but the vocals (at least they are not by Nik) are dreadful and an unnecessary spoken part is introduced into “Golden Void”. The karaoke continues with a painful version of “Hassan-i-Sahba” and the set closes with an energetic cover of “Silver Machine”.

The final treat is the studio track “Dream Circuit”, featuring Nik, originally released on the “Electric Dreams” promo. What we get is nine minutes of rather pointless noodling with various vocal samples and some sax thrown in at one point.

This album was released on Burnt Hippie records (BHR-004) in 2001.

Approach With Caution: 46000 Fibres and Nik Turner – the 5th Anniversary Concerts: Set 3

This is a CDR (TRI 3/3, available through CD Services) of a live performance from 1999 and qualifies as one of the least exciting Hawk-related artefacts I’ve yet come across – and there is strong competition for this dubious honour! There are two tracks on the album, the first being the set with Nik, which clocks in at 58 minutes. The lo-fi sound works better on the PC speakers than on the hi-fi. What you get is a gradual build-up to an extensive freeform jam, over which Nik gets plenty of opportunity to do foghorn impressions as well as some rather more conventional improvisation on the sax. He also plays flute, notably during the final 15 minutes of the track, where his work is reminiscent of the Xitintoday album. At best this is rather “difficult” music; perhaps it made more sense if you were there at the time. The second track is more freeform noodling, presumably without Nik, in 1995.