There’s disappointment in the air when the space-rockers change the flight plan.
★ Four years after a 50th-anniversary knees-up at this venue, Hawkwind are back, with their old friend Arthur Brown as support. Despite multiple costume changes, tonight there is no ritualistic donning of a flaming headdress during Brown’s totemic 1968 hit Fire. Why rely on gimmickry? Astonishingly, even at 81 years of age his voice is still present and correct, including that deeply scary falsetto. It’s all rather alarming… in the nicest way possible.
While it seems entirely reasonable that ticket buyers for a show billed as “an evening of Sonic Destruction, celebrating the Rituals and Odysseys of Space on the 50th anniversary of their acclaimed Space Ritual album” should expect to hear Hawkwind’s newly reissued live double album from 1973 in its entirety, what we actually get is a clutch of Space Ritual selections amid a traditional career-encompassing Hawks show, largely enhanced by oscillating slabs of noise from producer and musician William Orbit and a laser show that could probably be seen from Pluto.