VELVET THUNDER

One continues to marvel at the endlessly restless creativity displayed by this most iconic of English musical institutions…

Hawkwind have, over recent years, been as productive in terms of new studio recordings than at any time since their 1970s peak. Incredibly, for a band well over 50 years into their career, since 2016’s The Machine Stops they have released no less than seven new studio albums (counting Carnivorous, credited to the Hawkwind Light Orchestra), with an album every year with the exception of 2022. Understandably, this has led to some patchiness on some of these releases – though in all honesty less than one might fear. It is certainly a late-career creative burst unrivalled by any other band of remotely similar vintage that I can think of, despite changes of personnel within that time – and that brings us to this new offering for 2023, The Future Never Waits.

It isn’t even a short album either – on the contrary this one runs to almost 70 minutes, putting it in the double album ballpark in the vinyl ‘old money’, which underlines that remarkable ongoing creative burst. Of course, there is some material here which could have been excised or edited to tighten up the album to a degree, but once again, not as much as you might think. It is a pretty adventurous and diverse set as well, seeing the band stray outside of their space-rock ‘comfort zone’ on several occasions – although this is of course a double edged sword which is likely to attract as much criticism of it not ‘sounding enough like Hawkwind’ as it will gain deserved praise for still pushing an envelope which must by this time be large enough to post a small family car. The band have had yet more line-up changes as well, with Niall Hone and Tim Blake making way for bassist Doug McKinnon and keyboard player Tim Lewis (ex-Spiritualised, Coil and Julian Cope, and going by the baffling pseudonym of ‘Thighpaulsandra’), who join the existing trio of Magnus Martin, founder Dave Brock and longtime drummer Richard Chadwick. Let’s have a look at the material on offer here…

Right away the band throw us a curveball, with the 10-minute title track being an electronic mood piece more akin in style to a Tangerine Dream album from the 1970s or early ’80s than the heavier edge one might expect from the Hawks – though of course, as previously mentioned, that is one of the admirable things about the record. In fact, while it does take a little while to get into its stride, it is a pretty effective piece, but is hamstrung a little by placing it in the opening slot; it would, to these ears, have been a more effective option to have it nestled midway through proceedings, with the ears of the listener already accustomed. A more logical opener might well have been the paradoxically illogically titled The End, which comes up almost at the beginning, as Track Two. A shorter, punchier track, it is a more familiar Hawkwind chug, which would have grounded the curious ear pretty well if placed first. There’s another rather ambient piece next with the compact Aldous Huxley, a tribute featuring some spoken word vocals including a quote from Huxley himself, before the first real head-scratching moment which sees Hawkwind do what literally no-one has been calling for, and decide to adopt lounge jazz for a ten-minute almost-instrumental workout entitled They’re So Easily Distracted, which could conjure up the image of wrecked cars brought about by their distracted drivers struggling to comprehend the apparent news of Kenny G infiltrating the Hawkwind ranks. In fairness, it is more of a ‘space-lounge-jazz’ air to the track, which really doesn’t sound like anyone else, and after a couple of listens it does start to break down your coned-off Mental Block and come into focus as a highly enjoyable piece. It could, and should, have been pruned by half and edited down to five minutes, however, as it is definitely a little too much of an unexpectedly new thing.

No such worries next, however, as we are back on the old Spaceship Hawkwind again for the eight and a half minutes of Rama (The Prophecy), which clatters along in a lovely old Hawkwind fashion and restores what you might call ‘normal service’ at least for the moment. The lyric booklet might be handy here as, like several other tracks on the album, the vocals are quite far down in the mix. USB1 is a fairly tightly-reined instrumental piece which does a great job of linking the aggression of Rama with the following Outside Of Time, which is more of a slightly challenging listen again, but works well in linking us to what, to my mind, might well be the best piece here, the classic Hawkwind fare which is the determinedly progressive I’m Learning To Live Today. It’s an excellent track throughout, though again victim to very low vocal levels either by accident or tactical design (I confess to not being the biggest fan of Magnus Martin’s vocal style in particular, which is mixed low across every track he appears on here, and could be seen either as a positive or a negative in that regard). We’re just two tracks from the end now, and it’s time for the only real miss on the whole album. A Martin composition, the eight-minute The Beginning (placed, in contrary fashion, as near to the end of the album as The End was to the beginning!) is essentially two halves shunted together without making any meaningful whole; there’s more ambient atmosphere being built up without much success until halfway throughout, when it abruptly shifts left, off the road and into some derelict land as it becomes an acoustic guitar based song which is is hamstrung by rather weak vocals and a forgettable melody. It arguably should have been cut to tighten up the record, but with such a long album anyway it’s still not short-changing us to any degree. Brock supplies the closing number, the rather effective Trapped In This Modern World (don’t we all feel that way at times!), and the album ends strongly.

Overall, despite its flaws, this remains a brave and forward-looking album, still looking to try new things and yet still willing and able to turn their deft hands to a good old bit of ‘space-chug’. By contrast with the previous album Somnia, it ranks quite closely, though whereas that record had a very strong first half before losing its way as it went on, this one spaces out the ups and occasional downs more effectively, and avoids the trap of the weak tail-end after some strong opening batsmen – to borrow from the oddly cricket-themed cover art of the Road To Utopia album. It’s nicely packaged as well, with a lovely montage based around NASA space photography gracing the front (and unexpectedly featuring a band photo on the front cover for – I believe – the first time on a Hawkwind studio album; the closest I can think of is the stylised cricket-playing cartoon representations on The Road To Utopia). One continues to marvel at the endlessly restless creativity displayed by this most iconic of English musical institutions…