Steve Hillage

After a stint with Gong as their trippy, hippy, new agey guitar guru of cosmically and extremely raga-esque trance rock and improv heaven, Steve Hillage went solo. He branched out to carry his own version of the Gong gospel of personal freedom via his special blend of cosmic brotherhood, Eastern religion, new age, pyramids, ley lines, crystals, and some ferocious jazz fusion and progressive rock guitar blended with space rock synths. Hillage reinterprets some well-known tunes by other artists like Donovan and George Harrison here as well as penning some of his more memorable sonic treats. His awesome riffing and speedy solos on his Fender Strat rival those of Hendrix and Frank Marino but go further compositionally via exotic scales from other cultures…

A highly skilled guitarist known for his fluid, effects-heavy playing, British musician Steve Hillage has collaborated with countless musicians and influenced several genres over the course of his lengthy career, particularly space rock, prog, ambient, and techno. Initially associated with the Canterbury Scene during the late '60s and early '70s, Hillage played in groups such as Uriel and Khan before becoming a key member of psychedelic cult favorites Gong during the '70s.
1979 was an incredibly busy year for Steve Hillage - possibly too busy, what with three albums hitting the market in a brief span of time. Live Herald was a strong summation of his live performances, and Rainbow Dome Musick was a left turn into ambient music which, a decade later, would inspire Hillage and his constant partner Miquette Giraudy to get into the EDM scene as the ambient house act System 7…

For to Next followed Steve Hillage's last effort by a few years, and during the interim the evolving synth/new wave scene seems to have captured his imagination. For all intents and purposes a collaboration with keyboardist Miquette Giraudy, the album features relatively light and bouncy synthesizers augmented by Hillage's sometimes spacy guitar solos and sleepy vocals. Gone is Hillage's upbeat mysticism, replaced by the fashionably bleak outlook popularized by synth rock acts like Ultravox, Visage, and Gary Numan. Thus the mix of ingratiating melodies (always a Hillage hallmark) and a sense of social malaise on tracks like "These Uncharted Lands," "Anthems for the Blind," "Glory," and "Bright Future." It's a setting that keeps Hillage's talents too confined, especially for someone whose natural milieu is the unbounded aether of cosmic consciousness exemplified on albums like Motivation Radio and Green…

On Friday 21st June 1979, the Steve Hillage Band performed a headline set of soaring psychedelic guitar riffs of cosmic aspirations. The summer solstice night was a pivotal point in Steve Hillage's musical journey, and this recording, provided from Steve's personal archives, will cement the performance as historic. Prior to the festival, Steve and the band spent two weeks rehearsing in a barn at Worthy Farm, site of the Glastonbury Festival. They crafted a set fitting and psychedelically uplifting enough to truly celebrate the longest day of Summer at such an auspicious location. Steve was an integral member of the Glasto team alongside Michael Eavis, 'Pyramid' Bill Harkin and Turbosound/Funktion One's Tony Andrews. Their work focalised the 1979 Fayre, helping the rebirth of the first of the modern Glastonbury Festivals. After spending the 80's in music production, Steve and his partner Miquette Giraudy returned to recording and live performance in the 90's with the dance oriented System 7 and was fundamental in the introduction of the Dance Stage to Glastonbury in 1995.

Recorded at the Melkweg club in Amsterdam in November 2006, the former Gong guitarist performs a collection of tracks from his 1970s solo albums. Steve is accompanied by Miquette Giraudy on synthesisers, and Gong regulars Mike Howlett (bass) and Chris Taylor (drums)…

A highly skilled guitarist known for his fluid, effects-heavy playing, British musician Steve Hillage has collaborated with countless musicians and influenced several genres over the course of his lengthy career, particularly space rock, prog, ambient, and techno. Initially associated with the Canterbury Scene during the late '60s and early '70s, Hillage played in groups such as Uriel and Khan before becoming a key member of psychedelic cult favorites Gong during the '70s. He launched his solo career with the ambitious 1975 prog rock suite Fish Rising. While albums such as 1977's Motivation Radio contained some of his most accessible material, 1979's groundbreaking Rainbow Dome Musick eschewed lyrics and rhythms for extended guitar- and synth-based meditations, helping to pave the way for ambient and new age.

Some gigs are simply meant to be out there - even if they take decades to actually make it into our hands. This is without doubt one of those concerts; recorded at the Philips Halle, Düsselsdorf on the 28th March 1979 during the Live Herald Tour. Released following the AIM-nominated deluxe box set from Hillage, 'Searching for the Spark', this new Düsselsdorf vinyl showcases the Steve Hillage Band's prowess with excellent sound quality - a quality so high that you'll forget that it's a live recording until the applause. This is a band at the height of it's powers, with Steve in great voice throughout, and most obviously utterly enjoying themselves. The vibe is completely infectious and doesn't let up throughout the entire gig. Featuring Steve's own adventurous compositions and covers of Beatles and Donovan classics, all are approached with a joie-de-vivre and high sensibility. The trademark heady combination of vibrant psychedelic rock interwoven with an irresistible full-blooded groove, interspersed with the smoothest of deep-space synth/guitar trips gathers all before it in a tsunami of up-lifting music. With the benefit of hindsight, Steve's musical trajectory from the creative space riffs of Gong to the trance and techno of System 7 is made instantly clear.

70 minutes of guitar great Steve Hillage surfing 'the golden vibe' in 1973! Nine previously unreleased tracks of Hillage's recordings during an echo guitar jam session sit alongside 5 tracks from the same session taken from the Searching For The Spark box set. The recordings are part of a series of archived tapes liberated from storage by Hillage.