Back in ’69 Dave Brock actually played the Royal Albert Hall – busking the main stage as part of the Pop Proms – but Hawkwind were not a band that the venue would actually encourage to play there. More likely would have been to see them playing on the back of a flatbed truck outside the RAH. Jump forward a little over 50 years and the band are celebrating inside the old edifice and this triple CD set is the result. CD1 & CD2 are the gig itself and CD3 is a number of rehearsal tracks that didn’t make the setlist.
The lineup of Hawkwind is reasonably stable at the moment with Dave Brock - vocals, guitars, keyboards, synthesisers - the founder and only original member of the band, Richard Chadwick – drums, vocals, Magnus Martin – keyboards, guitars, vocals, Doug MacKinnon – bass, Thighpaulsandra (Tim Lewis) – keyboards, synthesisers, plus guest artist William Orbit. They have been a consistent unit for around 4 years and are as solid and capable as you could wish for. Hawkwind were always built around Dave Brock’s heavy riffs and this crew is sublimely capable of playing the classic numbers.
So, from the opening stanzas of ‘Levitation’, discordant sounds behind Brock’s welcome and the beginning of the evening’s riffage, we have classic Hawkwind – pounding drums, Brock’s vocals almost hidden behind the bass lines and swirling synth sounds. Every number unique, but every track bearing an identity that could only be Hawkwind. The two CDs are a grand representation of the show, much jamming, a few of the classic tracks thrown in but mainly built around the material that this incarnation of the band has been playing for the last few years.
It is difficult listening to the album and not being enveloped in the lightshow that always accompanies a Hawkwind show but the music itself creates the spectacular images in the mind of anyone who has been to see Hawkwind in the last 50 years.
This isn’t ‘Space Ritual’ reincarnated. this is Hawkwind after 50 years of constant change and while the heart of the sound – Dave Brock – is still there, they are not the band of earlier times. A superb album, very much a modern Hawkwind album, and very well worth checking out.
