"Star One" (Hawkwind Medley) review

Arjen Anthony Lucassen's Star One (Hawkwind Medley) - Review

Arjen Anthony Lucassen is a musician from the Netherlands who has just (May 2002) released a Space Metal album called Star One. The remarkable thing about this is that Dave Brock sang the vocals on one of Arjen's tracks, a 9-minute medley of Hawkwind songs. Arjen kindly sent me a copy of this track. You can check out his Star One album, and other projects at Arjen's website, http://www.ayreon.com

This track clocks in at 9:48, and covers 8 different Hawkwind numbers (some fleetingly). Arjen is an excellent musician and does not slavishly follow the original versions of these songs. Plus of course, a certain Mr. David Brock handles the vocals... The track starts off with Master of The Universe, familiar to all Hawkfans, but with the guitar more upfront than on any Hawkwind version. You can hear why the artist calls this a Space Metal album. MOTU segues smoothly into Silver Machine, which is very brief, and then into Psychedelic Warlords. The chord progression is the same, but Arjen puts a different emphasis on the riff, making it rockier. The result is a very *different* version of the song. Brainstorm comes along next, and the harmony vocals on the chorus make this the most melodic version

you've ever heard. Then Assault and Battery comes along, and this starts off like the intro to the Live Legends (1990) version, before changing completely. Arjen does something completely new with this track by making it very dynamic, alternating between loud / quiet passages. And then, to further push the envelope, he *doesn't* follow this with The Golden Void! The War I Survived follows A&B and it's a smoother version than the original, yet heavier too. Spirit Of The Age comes right on the heels of it, and is for me the least effective move in this medley, being brief and staccato. But a nice bit of editing and arranging closes out the medley with a light, airy arrangement of Lost Chronicles (an instrumental that followed the track "Neon Skyline" on the Xenon Codex album). Arjen adds some melodic lead guitar to this before it fades out. The musicianship is great, and Arjen has tried to put his own stamp on these songs, which is always better than trying to duplicate what Hawkwind have already done with them. And Dave Brock's vocals are excellent - he's certainly never sung better than this on any Hawkwind album or on his own solo stuff. Arjen gave the vocals a very sympathetic treatment, lots of delay or some other time-based effect, quite close to what Dave normally does with them anyway... I'm wondering what the rest of the album is like. It has apparently gone into the charts in Germany and Holland, and on this hearing it certainly deserves to!