Just re-released in October 2003, for the first time on DVD, comes this capture of a live performance on the 1995 'Alien 4' tour. It was really the last time (as in most recent) that Hawkwind mounted one of their nationwide-tours-with-a-big-stage-show…
Produced by former Pretty Things guitarist Dick Taylor, Hawkwind's first album was rightfully compared to Pink Floyd's early sound: an appealing conglomeration of hippie rock grooves and interplanetary guitar trips set to the phosphorescent wandering of Dik Mik's electronics and Nik Turner's cool sax playing. Hawkwind may not have been their most lucrative album, but it's where it all began. Hawkwind's initial galactic blues-rock sound is based on Dave Brock's guitar playing, rising smoke-like through the haze of lyrical space funk. The two opening tracks set the tone, with "The Reason Is" sinking in nicely to the mood of both Dave Brock's and John Harrison's guitar viscosity. After this, the real Hawkwind begins to emerge, as the eight-minute "Be Yourself" is delightfully plastered with echoed vocals and comic book ominousness, putting drummer Terry Ollis in the spotlight this time…
The following albums are included: Hawkwind, In Search of Space, Greasy Truckers’ Party (2CD) Doremi Fasol Latido, The Space Ritual Alive in Liverpool and London (2CD), Hall of the Mountain Grill, The 1999 Party (2CD) and this set also comes with a bonus disc collecting rare single mixes called Of Time and Stars – The Singles…
A drab sleeve does little justice to an imaginative (not to mention evocative) album title, but Church of Hawkwind's problems were only just beginning. Stumbling uncertainly into a new day, following their brief encounter with the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, Hawkwind were very much a ship in search of direction, but it would take the return of founder Nik Turner the following year to wrestle the group back on course. Church of Hawkwind finds them simply drifting, without even the isolated highlights of the previous year's Sonic Attack to look forward to.
Never a band to eschew electronics, Hawkwind here embrace the early-'80s fascination with blips, burps, and squeaking with a little too much enthusiasm…
It may or may not be the business of the future to be dangerous, but it certainly is the business of Hawkwind to do the unexpected on this album. This disc seems to be the group's effort to merge trance/ambient/techno sounds with that of the space rock that they pioneered. The resulting CD is a bit sleepy, but does have its moments. "Space Is Their (Palestine)" has segments that feel a bit like Kraftwerk covering Hassan I Shaba (aka Assassins of Allah). However, at over 11 minutes those moments are stretched a bit thin. "Let Sleeping Dogs Lie" is a harder-edged cut that comes closer to Hawkwind's more typical sound, but it still feels a bit off of its mark. A highlight of the disc is "Wave Upon Wave," which has a great proggy, atmospheric texture…
Attempting to make sense of Hawkwind's early-'80s output has never been easy. Between 1980 and 1984, the band itself released just four new studio albums, but behind them, the floodgates strained beneath the weight of a career's worth of live and studio outtakes and off-cuts, many of which did, in fact, date from the first years of this new decade. Among these, the albums Zones and This Is Hawkwind, Do Not Panic are the best representatives of the 1980 and 1984 eras; The Collectors Series, Vol. 2: Choose Your Masques arrived to slip in between them, with a seamless recounting of the group's fall 1982 U.K. tour - and at the same time, render any other document of the same period redundant. (The Friends and Relations and Independent Days collections both include overlapping material)…