Hawkwind

Hawkwind: Dave Brock (vocals, guitar, harmonica, percussion); Huw Lloyd (guitar); Nick Turner (vocals, alto saxophone, percussion); John A. Harrison (bass); Terry Ollis (drums). Recorded at Trident Studio, London, England in March and April, 1969. Over the course of the 1970s, British freaks Hawkwind came to be known as the ultimate space-rock band, with trippy, science-fiction-themed songs full of far-out electronic effects. Their first album, though, released at the tail end of the hippie era, finds them still hanging onto vestiges of both psychedelia and even folk-rock. "Hurry on Sundown," an acoustic strumfest left over from leader Dave Brock's busking days, is as far as one can imagine from the Hawkwind that fans would come to know. The rest of the record, extended improvisations built around simple, riff-based structures, sounds like a lysergically enhanced collision between Can and contemporaneous Pink Floyd. While all the electronic bells and whistles had yet to be firmly affixed to the Hawkwind spaceship, the mindset of these cosmic warriors was already very clearly focused on the farthest reaches of the galaxy.