Hawkwind- The Machine Stops (Cherry Red CDBRED688)

Hawkwind are back with a new concept studio album based on EM Forster’s 1909 book about how in the future staring into screens will control people. Pretty eerie… if you think about it in relationship to how the young people are controlled by the smartphones, that entirely rule and shape their lives. I don’t have one…  Anyway… musically it is quite a mixed bag but the lyrics are really cool and now I want to read the book, which I have ordered. There are some rocking songs but mostly it is Dave Brock solo material. He wrote nearly all the tracks and sings the lead on all but the first lead in tracks (Dibs) and the one quite awful track called Hexagone, that Dead Fred did all the instruments. Dave also plays all the synths, guitar, and keyboards on most of the tracks. Niall, Dibs and Haz Weaton split the bass duties.  Richard plays the drums. Very spacey stuff for sure but not many new ideas are presented. There are some really hard rocking guitar parts on The Machine, and A Solitary Man. Living on Earth has an interesting almost country fiddle section that I quite liked but the track itself was pretty average. The Harmonic Hall Niall plays all the instruments on this pretty eeire track with some “oh ha oh ha” vocals and almost techno trance synths (no thumps..). Yum Yum Dave plays all the instruments and does a spoken word over some drones and piano. Funny track. The Tube is a psychedelic instrumental that leads into the final track, Lost in Science, which again is more hard rocking It is a great concept to make an album on but musically it is a bit weak and is more like Dave’s solo material than a real Hawkwind band record. They need to just all set up in a studio make a real space rock record again and not these strange mostly electronic music albums that all begin to sound the same.  This is what the fans really crave…..

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