Hawkwind

“Doremi Fasol Latido” is the masterpiece of Hawkwind (a notch above 1971's “In Search Of Space”), and it's also the record where their era-defining intuition is fully realised: combining the violence of hard rock with the visionary sweep of psychedelia. They called it “space rock”, and it would go on to become one of the most prolific genres in rock music. But let's be clear: this wasn't the first time rock musicians (following the lead of the most enlightened jazz and avant-garde players) had looked up to the sky, aiming straight for the infinity of the cosmos. It had already happened, in a way, with the whole of psychedelic culture, which, at a certain point, by drawing extremely subtle correspondences between the unconscious and the cosmos (almost like a modern rereading of certain Romantic ideals), had lost itself in sidereal space — so distant and mysterious that it sparked, in the most sensitive souls (or should we say the most ‘out of it’?), sensations and images of a terrifying revolutionary force, with immense consequences for the development of rock music.

Just think for a moment of the impact that, say, Pink Floyd's “Astronomy Domine” had on the entire English underground (and beyond) of the time. But would any of this have been possible without the help of a stamp or two of LSD? Maybe. But who can be certain? The only certainty is that once the flower-power season faded, heroin began to take over. The comedown era brought with it the cursed visions of a drug no longer capable of fostering utopian dreams, but at most leading to the desolate acceptance of the decline of the very idea of utopia.

So Hawkwind's space rock ended up taking on ‘negative’, obsessive connotations, translating into mammoth, static musical structures, ruinously confined within an endless eternity. The oneiric expansiveness of Sixties psychedelia gave way to simplified, repetitive arrangements. Repetition became the symbol of a new existential condition. Boredom and heroin: two sides of the same coin. Down this road, space rock would eventually reach California, the birthplace of one of the genre's most terroristic and creative bands: Chrome. But, for now, in the early Seventies, there was still a long way to go. So, Hawkwind. Or rather, in the line-up that recorded this record: Dave Brock (vocals, guitar, harmonica and keyboards), Del Dettmar (synth, keyboards), Dik Mik (synth, electronic sounds), Ian “Lemmy” Kilmister – yes, that Lemmy – (bass, guitar, vocals), Simon King (drums) and Nik Turner (sax, flute and vocals).

Their debut had been self-titled, released in 1970. Revolutionary ideas, but songwriting and balance between the parts still needed work. At the Isle of Wight, though, in what turned out to be the swan song of the hippie utopia, our uninvited guests managed to send the crowd into paranoia. A new era was taking shape. The follow-up, “In Search Of Space”, had set things right, with excellent tracks such as “You Shouldn't Do That”, “You Know You're Only Dreaming” and “We Took The Wrong Step Years Ago” (among their absolute high points).

But it's with this 1972 record that the recipe attains masterpiece status. Make no mistake, Hawkwind essentially repeat the same formula as the two previous albums, but here they do it with greater conviction and, at times, explosive creativity. The guitar riff that opens “Brainstorm” could have come straight off some hard rock record. But it only takes a few seconds to realise something's off. Hawkwind want to drag us into a hallucinogenic trip; or rather, they want to recreate one through a reckless use of electronics, an untamed rhythmic pulse, enveloping galactic storms. And so, between incendiary crescendos and astral stasis, the oscillators, sax and guitars carve out shortcuts to the heart of black holes, ready to suck the sound in and pierce its limbs, disintegrating its edges in an imposing sonic holocaust (Bardo Pond, among others, would take note). King's drumming shifts uneasily between primitivist urges (a lab-synthesised Maureen Tucker undergoing a robotic metamorphosis) and explosive, if ultimately restrained, passages. Over time, this would remain one of their signature tracks, as well as one of their greatest masterpieces.

While the music rummages through its own guts, Brock's 12-string lays out shimmering acoustic watercolours amid a breeze thick with electronic pollen. It's the prelude to the magnificent “Space Is Deep”, hurled between asteroid storms and adorned with the synth's winding, celestial hymn. The mini electric-piano sonata of “One Change” is followed by the abrasive ride of “Lord Of Light”, with a powerful bassline from Lemmy: an exasperated trance, a line drawn between far-flung galaxies, and a relentless lysergic-electronic fury (strip away all the psychedelic trappings and you've got Motorhead!).

It's a fine thing, in the second half, to hear the guitars literally catch fire, inventing, from scratch, an entire generation of ‘space’ guitarists, from Helios Creed to the Gibbons brothers. More acoustic 12-string, submerged in a sidereal wind, opens “Down Through The Night”, a heroin-addled ballad for drifting astronauts. A hefty, blues-tinged groove, meanwhile, marks the languid rise of “Time We Left This World Today”, with guitars battered by wah-wah and a dangerously solipsistic sense of ‘trance’. The music ends up becoming a full-blown ego trip, with no option but to dig inward, in the vain hope of finding a way out of this nightmare. This ‘autism of sound’ reaches its point of no return in the ‘dark’ ballad “The Watcher”. Lemmy sings with visible effort, stumbling over the words, while the guitar arpeggio, infested by warped synth trails, rings out ‘empty’, thoroughly spent. The cosmic backdrop is completely wiped away.

In short, it's as if, by the end of this journey, the mimesis Hawkwind had set out on collapses into a terrifying powerlessness before the sheer immensity of the cosmos. And indeed, after the towering “Space Ritual” (one of the greatest live albums of all time), Brock and co. would never again manage to capture that essence.

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30/10/2006