The cynical response to the release of yet another Hawkwind live album – at least their fifth since 2015 – is to wave a dismissive hand as if wafting away a hippie’s morning-after lentil curry fart. But to do so would be to deny the aural document of what was billed as An Evening Of Sonic Destruction 50 Years On… Celebrating The Rituals And Odyssey Of Space at the Royal Albert Hall in September 2023 at an event ostensibly celebrating Space Ritual’s halfcentury while actually revelling in a career-spanning set.
The current line-up is arguably the best since the mid-70s.
And what Live At The Royal Albert Hall emphatically proves is that, shorn of the lasers, lights and the other visual ephemera that are an integral part of the Hawkwind live experience, the current line-up of linchpin singer/guitarist Dave Brock, singer-guitarist Magnus Martin, bassist Doug MacKinnon, keyboardist Tim ‘Thighpaulsandra’ Lewis and long-serving drummer Richard Chadwick is arguably the band’s best since their mid-70s heyday.
Indeed, the material from then-current album The Future Never Waits sits comfortably with the classics with which Hawkwind made their name. The expansive and pummelling heaviness of Rama (The Prophecy) – which is punctuated by a triumphant “Woo-hoo!” – matches the full-throttle delivery of You’d Better Believe It, while The Beginning hints at what ELO might have sounded like if Jeff Lynne had experienced an ayahuasca ceremony in the early 70s, as its five-minute opening grind gives way to baroque pop.