Electric Tepee [Original recording remastered]

Electric Tepee, Hawkwind's fine 1992 album, is once again available thanks to Esoteric Recording's vision in acquiring the band's post mid-70s catalogue. This album is just one of the many treats already released and also yet to come.

This is a fine album by any measure of Hawkwind's own history. At this point the band were reduced to just a trio of Dave Brock, Alan Davey and Richard Chadwick but with the modern recording techniques available at that time they produced a full, typically-Hawkwind soundscape of driving bass-thumping space-rock and wistful synthesizer-led space themes. It has melody, it has pace, it has great riffs - it's a classy album.

It was originally released as a CD and double-LP. Not all of the material is near the uniformly high quality of standout tracks such as the opening "LSD", the spacey "Blue Shift" and the hard driving "The Secret Agent" and "Right to Decide", so I guess 5-stars would be unjustly high. Some people might also carp that there is nothing new here, Hawkwind are just treading the same path as before and to some extent they would have a point but, to many of their fans, this can almost be a positive - it is the band doing what they do best and doing it on a studio album of new songs is better, certainly in my view, than yet another live release, of which Hawkwind have too many!

This version of the album has been remastered by Mark Powell who has done a good job. A great sound for a great album.

If you've ever liked Hawkwind then get this whilst it's still available!

Oiginally released in 1992, Electric Tepee is an interesting Hawkwind album. Down to a power trio of Brock/Davey/Chadwick, the challenge for them at this point in time was to create the classic Hawkwind sound whilst operating as a 3-piece, following the departure of Harvey Bainbridge, Simon House and Bridget Wishart. They harnasssed midi technology to help them achieve this, and were musically impressive on the Electic Tepee tour (Though somewhat lacking in visual excitement due to their reduced numbers.) They were also in competition at the time with new up and coming spacey bands such as Ozric Tentacles and The Orb, so the stakes were high.

We start with L.S.D which has a slow doomy riff and gruff vocals from Alan Davey. The whole sound is impressive especially the pacy mid-section. The best bit is right at the end as the band crescendo you can hear an astronauts voice saying "Hello, hello.....goodbye": Excellent stuff !! Davey's 'Blue Shift' is next, and it's a truly stunning synth instrumental which wouldn't sound out of place on a Tangerine Dream album. When they played this live with an image of Planet Earth in the background it was awe inspiring. 'Death of War' is next, which features Brock narrating an anti-war poem over a keyboard and snare drum backing, with lots of war sound effects. It's not bad, and it certainly conjures up images of World War 1. The excellent 'Secret Agent' is next, which has some great lyrics from Brock: I especially like the 'I'm in a tight spot' bit, very funny and reminiscent of Monty Python: all good clean fun.
The throwaway 'Garden Pests' is next (rubbish!!) followed by 'Space Dust', a meandering synth piece which sounds like it could have been recorded on a U.F.O. The Arabic flavoured instrumental 'Snake Dance' follows, it's good but it's crying out for a Simon House violin solo. 'Mask of the Morning' is a new version of 'Mirror of Illusion' from their eponymous 1970 debut album. It's a good pacey rocker, but would have been better had they added some new lyrics instead of going over old ground (A bad habit of Brock's and a sign of laziness or writer's block)

The short instrumental 'Rites of Netherworld' heralds what I consider to be the best track on the album, 'Don't Understand'. This is the Hawkwind power trio in full trance mode. A simple repetetive guitar riff is jammed to infinity and beyond; excellent sound effects feature too and this could easily be the soundtrack to a Sci-Fi film: impressive stuff. 'Sadness Runs Deep' sounds more like a Brock solo track and features an annoying synth riff: it isn't great and it's a bit of a let down after the previous track.
Things improve with 'Right To Decide' which is an impressive commercial sounding rocker, and was released as a single. Like a lot of immediately impressive tracks it gets a bit boring after a few listens, but it is a very good song. 'Going To Hawaii' is an atmospheric synth/percussive number, which is much better than the title suggests. The album finishes with the title track, which starts promisiongly with Native American Indian chants but doesn't really go anywhere after that.
So there you have it: a good attempt by the 3-piece Hawkwind line-up to try and capture that quintessential Hawkwind sound, and they don't do a bad job. I think it would have been better had they edited out the weaker tracks like 'Garden Pests' and 'Sadness Runs Deep', but on the whole, 7/10 and three stars.

It's worth buying for the 1st track alone!
Brilliant synths bursting your speakers to be replaced by that fantastic Rik bass!
Love this cd to bits! Always great for annoying your neighbours!