28/08/01

New stuff…

Mercury Rev All Is Dream - Long awaited follow up to 98's Deserter Songs, and it follows a similar path. I have only managed to play it about twice so far, but my gut feeling is that it is a really great album. Its big, lush, and full sounding, but the elaborate arrangements do not diminish the quality of the songs in any way. My guess is that this is a worthy successor to Deserter Songs, and that was one hell of a tough act to follow.

Ozric Tentacles Tantric Obstacles / Earpsongs - I could not find the Waterfall album recommended by others here, so just picked one at random. This appears to be a budget reissue of two early albums, and from a quick listen seems to lie somewhere between Gong at their most trippy, Hawkwind and jazz fusion. The guitarist certainly sounds like he studied under Steve Hillage. I have not played it all the way through yet, though suspect that its actually quite cool. I'm not too taken with the recording quality though.

Hawkwind Epoch Eclipse - A trip (no other word for it) down memory lane, this 3 CD box set is a pretty well chosen journey through the many phases of Hawkwind. If you are not familiar with them, they were possibly the UK's nearest attempt at Krautrock, with their first three albums really being rather good. Hawkwind have always been a product of their time, plus large quantities of the drugs of that time, and as a result certainly sound embarrassingly dated in the lyrical department. Had they done instrumentals I'm sure they would be held in pretty much the same reverence as Ash Ra Temple etc. Unfortunately they did not! The CD makes the fundamental omission of Shouldn't Do That from the In Search Of Space album, which IMHO is their best song, but it does pretty much get the rest. The mastering unfortunately does IMHO not get close to the original UA vinyl, but that’s very hard to find in good nick these days.

Tony