Doremi Fasol Latido [Extra tracks, Original recording remastered]

Previously they had only been in search of Space - now they were deep in HawkSpace - a previously unexplored region where hippy whimsy met extreme heavy metal while being adorned with electronic bleeps and howls old Mr Stockhausen might have recognised. Like nothing before & not really much since....

Hawkwind had picked up two new members by 1972, Lemmy on bass & Simon King on drums - the pair tightened up the rhythm section considerably and this now became the driving force of the Hawkwind sound.

It all starts with true classic 'Brainstorm' - this is what Hawkwind would be about from now on, thunderously loud & driving rock with the aforementioned bleeps, bloops & whooshes with the spectral sax of Captain Nik in the background. Next up is the almost ballad like Space is Deep with some gorgeous 12 string before the rest of the band cruch into action on top of a VCS drone. Slight dip in form with One Change - 50 seconds long & 50 seconds of your life wasted. Lord of Light - OK but again not a personal favourite. Down Through the Night - another semi acoustic looking back (almost for the last time) at the first two albums which leads into the magnum opus Time We Left This World Today which boasts lyrics of staggering silliness allied to a monster riff and allows Lemmy to show that he was streets ahead of any previous or later Hawkwind bass players - the climax to the track defies description. As a reward Lemmy gets to have one his own songs recorded, a sinister and understated piece pretty well consisting of acoustic guitar & very mixed down fuzzed bass. Great Stuff & virtually all the tracks on Doremi found their way onto the even more classic live double album Space Ritual the following year.

Very nice to have the extra 4 tracks- especially the infamous 'pulled' single Urban Guerilla and its B side Brainbox Pollution. All in all well worth the modest price it cost me - a regular on my cars CD Changer!!

Before re-mastering this was the defining album of Hawkwind from this period, this version is better still and well worth buying even if you own a CD of the core album. The icing on the cake is the great price!

For those that know the album, the extras are the first attraction - Urban Guerrilla is really clean and blends Turner, Lemmy and Brock behind Calvert splendidly; Brainbox Pollution is better than the perfectly fine rocking version performed around 2001 for its use of synth and Turner's jazz inspired sax; Lords of Light single version adds little and Ejection is yet another studio version for which it would be interesting to compare the line-up to that on Calvert's sole album.

For the core album, here is my take:

Structural (ignoring One Change) this is a collection of alternately pounding rock / more acoustic pieces.

The opener Brainstorm is clearly Nik Turner's most important piece and has everything here including the original tail-piece expanded in Space Ritual and dropped since. In terms of the re-mastering the sound is muddy and this is probably the least improved piece, I assume the master tapes / engineer prohibit doing better.

We cut to Space is Deep which has the most fantastic guitar work (often overlooked in Hawkwind) reminding me of water drops falling from icicles onto a frozen pond. The re-mastering leaves this really crystal clear. I also like the build at the end that brings the whole band in.

I will skip Once Change an odd and very short piece of keyboard / synth

Lord of Light is powerful and weird and works well in this mix (and I think the extra track is no better).

Down Through the Night is another melodic piece with some haunting lyrics and great playing.

Time we Left this World Today is a pounding rock masterpiece with hypnotic repeating lyrics and here the re-mastering of the bass / drums works very well and bears turning up to 11.

The Core album ends with Lemmy's haunting The Watcher which again has some lovely guitar.

Overall you wish that they had found a way to produce at least one more Studio Album at this time with the extras and maybe Orgone Accumulator / Seven by Seven added in. Ah well in a parallel universe maybe!

Five stars is a grossly underrated score for this, perhaps the supremely supremest Hawkwind album of all time. 50 stars would be perhaps nearer the mark. From the blindingly blistering opener 'Brainstorm' ( did Nik Turner ever surpass this?) to the creepy and sinister closer 'The Watcher' there is no let up. 'Space Is Deep', 'Lord of Light', 'Down Through the Night' and the mind-boggling 'Time We Left This World Today' (all Dave Brock classics from what I call his most creative period) leave you feeling as though you've been through a shredding machine. Listening to it again after some 15-20 years has left me wondering "How did they do it"? The production is inspirational and leaves nothing to the imagination. This album summed up the counter-culture and left nothing unsaid.

And now with the extra tracks - the difficult to locate 'Urban Guerilla', 'Brainbox Pollution' and 'Ejection' (strictly a Robert Calvert track) this CD is required listening material.

All my reviews are intensely personal and so may not be to everyone's liking but this album, as originally released, was building towards the Space Ritual tour of 1972. What better recommendation could there be?

Personally I believe that, after this album (apart from the Space Ritual live double which was really only a longer reworking) there was nowhere for Hawkwind to go. They said it all in this one statement.

For the newcomer to Hawkwind this obviously comes highly recommended - to those who are familiar with their material - enough said!!