Arriving out of a band called Sisyphus, with the addition of singer Sonja Kristina, the band Curved Air rose to prominence in the early seventies and captured the attention of both the British press and the growing rock audience with some of the great musicians of the age.
From the opening squally feedback and Steve Tyler’s trademark caterwauling, there’s no mistaking whose album this is; there are some true stormers here.
The best thing of all was the Big Country dual guitar sound; it blew away all the synthesizer bands dominating the music scene in the early Eighties and allowed real rock & roll to make a much-needed comeback. Proper music with proper songs about actual events or feelings.
What you have here is thirteen fabulous cuts, all featuring what you would expect from The Damned, speed, melody, aggression, attitude by the bucket load, and a belly full of laughs.
As soon as Derek Sherinian roars into action on the title track, ably assisted in a raiding pack of Zak Wylde on guitar, Billy Sheehan on bass, Armen Ra on Theremin and Simon Phillips on drums, you know things are red hot as ever.
Just the name alone conjures up thoughts of demonic early seventies heavy metal, progressive rock. Atomic Rooster came out with a couple of very powerful early seventies albums. They sounded great.
Probably Savoy Brown’s best and most successful album. It was recorded on a personnel precipice as within weeks of its release, three-quarters of the band deserted the ship leaving leader Kim Simmonds on his own
Back in 1992, Hawkwind released ‘Electric Tepee,’ a sensational album of space rock combining intergalactic orbital rockers with huge chunks of Hawk dreamscapes that whisk you off on a sonic journey, clocking in at one hour and fifteen minutes.
‘Interstellar Chaos’ is a series of trips to outer space through the mind of Harvey Bainbridge. All the music is played by the man himself. Each one whisking you away to different parts of the stratosphere.
As ever, original space rockers Hawkwind go where nobody has gone before, not because of any particular enterprise, but perhaps because they don’t care if everybody else just thinks they are off their collective rockers.
