Hawkwind – Psychedelic Selection
Hawkwind return with Psychedelic Selection, and although this is a new release, it is not quite a new album in the traditional sense. It is something slightly different, and in many ways that makes it even more fascinating.
Over the last few years, Hawkwind have been going through a remarkable creative period. Albums such as The Future Never Waits and Stories From Time And Space have shown a band still moving forward, still exploring, still refusing to simply rely on their legacy. Psychedelic Selection continues that journey, but it does so by blurring the lines between a studio album, an archive excavation, a set of reworked classics and a transmission from somewhere in the band’s future.
That is probably the best way to approach it. This is not a standard compilation, and it is not a retrospective. It is Hawkwind in motion.
The album opens with “Four Legs Good, Two Legs Bad” and “There Are Fairies In The Garden”, two pieces that point towards a forthcoming Hawkwind project. These tracks have a very different atmosphere. They are ethereal, almost fairytale-like in places, with buzzing bees, birdsong, animal sounds and a spoken vocal delivery that gives everything a dreamlike quality.
There is a real early 70s feel here at times, and I found myself thinking of Gong, especially in the way the music floats rather than drives. There are also guitar lines that brought Steve Hillage to mind. It is psychedelic, but not in the obvious heavy space-rock way. It is gentler, stranger, more pastoral, almost as if Hawkwind have landed the spaceship in the middle of an enchanted garden.
Then we move into “Hurry On Sundown”, and this is one of the emotional centrepieces of the album. This is a powerful new rendering of one of Hawkwind’s earliest songs, and it also carries great significance because it features the final recording with the band by guitarist Huw Lloyd-Langton. There is a real poignancy to that, and the performance feels like a fitting tribute. It has a heavily driven slide guitar feel, and Dave Brock’s voice really does seem to reach back through time.
“The Demented Man” is another revisited moment from Hawkwind’s past, but again it is not just a straight remake. This is one of David Brock’s most beautiful ballads, and here the keyboard orchestration lifts the melody into a new space. The original melancholy is still there, but it feels more expansive, more dreamy, and more cinematic.
“Tortured Mind” then takes things in a different direction again. This is much more of an out-and-out rocker. There is a Velvet Underground / Lou Reed kind of feel to parts of it, that slightly loose, streetwise rhythm sitting alongside the familiar Hawkwind pulse.
One of the things I really enjoyed about Psychedelic Selection is how it moves between these different versions of the band. “PSI Power” and “Traveller Of Space” are presented as live-in-the-studio recordings, and they are excellent. They have that swirling space-rock atmosphere, with sequences and effects moving around the music, but they also have an immediacy that comes from a band playing together in the moment.
For me, one of the real highlights comes with “Land Of Min” and “Out Of Luck”, which are drawn from Dave Brock’s unreleased dance and trance project. This is where the album becomes especially interesting. Hawkwind’s music has always had that hypnotic, repetitive, immersive quality, and you can hear how naturally it leans towards trance and dance music when pushed in that direction.
I have been talking a lot recently about immersive sound and how certain music almost seems designed for that experience. Hawkwind are one of those bands. The sequences, the effects, the slow-building riffs, the feeling of movement through space — it all lends itself perfectly to a more immersive listening experience. These tracks show how close Hawkwind have often been to that dance/trance crossover without ever losing their own identity.
“Part Of Human Behaviour (No Sex Allowed)” is quirky, strange and very Hawkwind. “Human Zoo” has a dreamy, trance-like feel with distant vocals, while “The Judge And The Fisherman” brings in a female voice and moves into mid-paced Hawkwind rock, full of familiar textures and sounds. I even spotted what sounds like a little “boing” effect that reminded me of Zebedee from The Magic Roundabout — and once you hear something like that, you cannot unhear it!
“Goonhilly Down” will have an extra resonance for anyone in Cornwall, and certainly for me, with Goonhilly being just down the road. It showcases the current line-up in full flight and has that great dreamy, groovy, slightly melancholy Hawkwind feel. Spoken vocals, space effects, a steady pulse — everything you want from this band is here.
“Ocean’s Spiral”, from Magnus Martin, is another standout. It has a minimalist, circular quality that made me think of Philip Glass in places, but there is also a Tangerine Dream-like feel to the way it unfolds. It acts almost as a gateway into the closing “Traveller Of Space”, which is a perfect title for a Hawkwind track and a perfect way to end the album. It is mid-paced, reflective and journey-like — and that is really what Hawkwind have always been about.
What makes Psychedelic Selection work is the sequencing. On paper, a hybrid of new songs, reworked classics, unreleased material, side-project pieces and live-in-the-studio recordings could feel disjointed. But the more you listen, the more it starts to make sense. The booklet also helps, because it takes you by the hand and explains where these pieces come from and how they fit into the wider Hawkwind universe.
This is not just Hawkwind looking back. It is Hawkwind looking sideways, forwards, backwards and somewhere else entirely. It is an album full of fragments, transmissions and clues. It tells us where the band have been, where they are now, and perhaps gives us a glimpse of where they might be going next.
Psychedelic Selection is different from the last few Hawkwind albums, but it is still unmistakably Hawkwind. It is exploratory, strange, hypnotic, sometimes beautiful, sometimes quirky, and always moving.
For long-time fans, there is a great deal here to absorb. For newer listeners, it may not be the most straightforward entry point, but it does show just how wide the Hawkwind universe really is.
Music is the healer and the doctor.
Phil Aston | Now Spinning Magazine
