THE FUTURE NEVER WAITS

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Second track ‘The End’ is a more recognisable Hawkwind sound, a driving guitar riff and drums with superb overlays of synthesisers giving occasional echos of ‘Urban Guerrilla’ and other Hawkwind favourites. You do need to be paying attention, as next up is ‘They Are So Easily Distracted’, another 10 minute opus that meanders along with piano, saxophone and synthesisers conjuring up magical sounds that are really enjoyable with a meaningful spoken finish. Aldous Huxley sees them incorporating soundbites to another celestial wash of sounds and having got used to the new age of Hawkwind, we’re taken on another playful journey as the sonic winds underpin an unusually jazzy outburst on They Are So Easily Distracted.

Since then, the band have recorded for numerous independent labels, including Flicknife, their former manager Douglas Smith's label GWR, Essential (through Castle Communications), and from 1994-97 their own label EBS administered by Smith. This segues into the rising, crunching guitar riff of “The End,” which, perhaps intentionally, slightly echoes 1974’s “You Better Believe It. Surely everyone knows ‘Silver Machine‘, Hawkwind’s single recorded in February of 1972, which was to become a number 3 hit in the UK. Sounding in places more like Jean Michel Jarre than ‘Brainstorm’, its a dreamy theme setting piece, mystical and mesmerising in equal parts.The ominous spoken intro to Rama and the hypnotic vibe they channel on I’m Learning to Live Today gets us back on a more comfortable track that’s not fallen far from the tree pulsing away with vigour. The album clocks in at sixty-nine minutes, but they have managed to create a feel that ensures tht this is not too long. This leads us into The End, which has a punky edge to the guitars at the start before shifting towards a more spacey feel, whilst still maintaining that edge throughout. As any fan will know, their catalogue is varied, and this release may be seen as a progression of their signature sound.

The Future Never Waits is likely my favorite Hawkwind studio work since the heights of Electric Teepee , The Business Trip and Space Bandits in the early 1990s; and I’d like to give it some time, but it’s wholly possible that I prefer it to any of those albums, largely because the whole second side of The Future Never Waits is a triumph of mesmeric spacerock that I would hold up against anything, and I mean anything, the band has ever done, live or in the studio. Oh, a quick word about “who” is Hawkwind right now, which in a way doesn’t matter, because Hawkwind ‘23 sounds utterly fresh, completely un-shadowed by the considerable legacy of being the world’s greatest space rock and jam band; and Hawkwind ‘23 is still immediately identifiable as Hawkwind, even if the band somehow sound new. Which, to certain extent, is just what they do, moving easily from ambient, space-noise-assisted soundscapes (the title track, which opens the album with over ten minutes of easy-on-the-ear Hawknoise) through more traditional, bare-bones proto punk ( The End, which, of course and unsurprisingly for such a singular band, comes near the start of the album), a spoken word sample on the death of Author Aldous Huxley to a sprawling, late night jazz odyssey ( They Are So Easily Distracted) in the space of the first four tracks.It’s merely the Hawkwind way of doing things; Trapped In The Modern Age starts with a piece of electric piano that wouldn’t have sounded out of place on a Supertramp album before Brock joins in with that voice, the voice that makes something, however it sounds, whatever seam of music it mines, pure ‘Wind. The title track is a more ambient scene setter – you get the impression that it’s a track that could have no end; an improvised groove that gentle pulses decorated with squeaks and whines as an alternative the relentless pumping riffs. And on the very doomy ‘The Beginning’, we’re told “ upload your consciousness here and leave your body at the door marked Incinerator”and how “ the phasing out of all carbon based humans is now unavoidable”in a song which brought the film Soylent Green to mind.

The former provides the first of the familiar stories of far-off places in The End that chugs along with trademark gusto aided and abetted by expansive drum fills and rushes of space wind.The band’s 35th studio album is an outstanding progression to their varied and celebrated catalogue. This material has been subject to many retitling, repackaging and re-issuing through different labels, leading to multitudes of cheap titles of which the band have no control. It was secured by Cherry Red in the UK for their Atomhenge imprint in 2008 and has been re-issued with the inclusion of previously unreleased bonus tracks. You get the impression that it’s a track that could have no end; an improvised groove that could take off anywhere, gentle pulses decorated with squeaks and whines as an alternative the relentless pumping riffs. The album features founding Hawkwind member Dave Brock, alongside Richard Chadwick, Magnus Martin, Doug MacKinnon and Tim ‘Thighpaulsandra’ Lewis.

At the beginning of 1980, Dave Brock started collating material from his archives and issuing cassette tape albums under the imprint Weird Records. In front of the riff is a hugely poppy, lilting vocal, and “The End” is perhaps best described as the Barracudas and Robyn Hitchcock collaborating with The Professionals (in fact, Brock has never sounded as Steve Jones-esque as he does here).I visualise myself floating in space, void of atmosphere, with my ‘Senses Working Overtime’ as XTC once told us, but not necessarily in this context. A truly immersive piece of work that reveals more of itself with each listen, it’s easily – to my fevered mind at least – the best thing this band has come up with in decades. But at root, it’s still Hawkwind and if you know Hawkwind there’s little on this album you wouldn’t have been expecting or which surprises you. The band has been home to many musicians; the likes of drummer Ginger Baker, poet/vocalist Robert Calvert, and guitarist Richard Hugh“ Huw” Lloyd-Langton but is most closely associated with Dave Brock, who remains the only original member. Opening track The Future Never Waits delivers a 10-minute instrumental-led space-age march, before progressing into the guitar-driven followup The End, featuring Dave Brock’s trademark vocals and chugging machine-gun riffs.