Hawkwind

For 50 years, Hawkwind’s ‘Space Ritual’ has been ranked as one of the best live albums of all time. It had almost everything that their legendary live shows had – the pounding riffs from Dave Brock, the space themes, the electronics, twin drums, Lemmy on bass, Robert Calvert on vocals and poetry, Nik Turner’s eerie sax. It only omitted the light show, the smoke and the dancers.

So, to celebrate, this has been released as an eleven disc boxed set – 10 audio discs and 1 Blu Ray – plus the booklet, reproduction of the tour poster/programme. Phew!

So, first question is “Does it hold up after all this time?” and the answer is, almost surprisingly, yes. Dave Brock’s guitar is raw and powerful, the riffs heavy and working perfectly against Lemmy’s bass lines. Dik Mik & Del Dettmar were early adopters of synths and experimental electronics, and they were laying down sounds that have often been copied but that originated here. Nik Turner's sax swoops and honks with avant garde bravado. Calvert’s vocals – mainly spoken word and poetry are the one element that becomes repetitious occasionally.

The second question must be “11 discs!!?” The album was a double and so you get a remastered version (from the original master tapes) of the original on two discs, new mixes of the three concerts in their entirety, a Steven Tayler remix of the original and a Blu-Ray 5.1 mix as well.

Thirdly “Is it worth having?” Personally, it is worth having for the remaster and the Steven Tayler remix. The remaster is clear and the music has better separation between the instruments and the remix give lots of different insights to the music. Having the three concerts individually is good but not essential.