'Hawkwind Space Rock... a new album'
Released on the 14th August 1970 with adverts trumpeting the above statement, Hawkwind's debut album is perhaps their most egalitarian sounding release; the one that feels most in line with the spirit of the age.
Bookended with two acoustic songs - 'Hurry on Sundown' & 'Mirror of Illusion' - that hark back to singer / guitarist Dave Brock's busking days, the former of which, a perennial Hawk fan favourite, opens the proceedings with a deceptively sunny demeanour before we are cast into an avant garde soundworld that only relents with the arrival of the lumpen album closer.
The sonic attack that makes up the majority of the album is a darkly discordant, mostly instrumental, jam sesssion that finds the band - Brock, Nik Turner (saxophone, vocals), Huw Lloyd Langton (lead guitar), John Harrison (bass), Terry Ollis (drums), Dik Mik (electronics) & Dick Taylor (guitar) - firing off each other in a honed but maybe slightly tentative manner. What they are doing, though, is developing the sound, that, following a line-up reshuffle, would explode on the following year's 'In Search of Space', the album that would perfectly encapsulates the truth of the statement at the top of this post.
It has it's champions but 'Hawkwind' has long been regarded, perhaps at best, as a curio within the bands catalogue, a tentative first step, but you know the cliché about adventures and first steps, and this one started a whole series of adventures that have lasted 55 years with no sign of stopping.
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