Friday 30 November 2018

SPIRITS BURNING REVIEW

http://www.the-rocker.co.uk/

71o2upihmol-_sl1044_SPIRITS BURNING & MICHAEL MOORCOCK
An Alien Heat
Gonzo Multimedia
If I take a handful of painkillers and close my eyes I can almost remember being young. Before life destroyed everything I held dear. Back then I was a Michael Moorcock addict. Not that he benefited as nearly all the 100+ books of his I owned had come from second hand bookshops, mainly Bobbies in Dalry Road and Morrison Street. Fast forward a few decades and it turned out they were worth a blooming fortune. So they helped the late Mrs H move to her dream house shortly before she died.
As befitted an MMhead I was also a Hawkwind and Blue Oyster Cult fan, attached to the boc-l mailing list and following HW around on tour. Strange days. “An Alien Heat” is volume one of the “The Dancers at the End of Time” trilogy which sees mastermind Don Falcone ably assisted by Albert Bouchard, and Michael Moorcock. As well as the main instigators there is also room for Blue Öyster Cult family members Joe Bouchard, Richie Castellano, and Donald “Buck Dharma” Roeser, Hawkwind family members Harvey Bainbridge, Adrian Shaw, Mick Slattery, and Bridget Wishart, plus Andy Dalby (Arthur Brown’s Kingdom Come), Monty Oxymoron (The Damned), Ken Pustelnik (The Groundhogs), Jonathan Segel (Camper Van Beethoven), Andy Shernoff (The Dictators), Lux Vibratus (Nektar), Steve York (Arthur Brown), and more. So that’s going to make a lot of people very happy.
And there is some very good spacerock on offer here as you would expect. What it’s missing, though, is a good vocalist. A few folk have a bash including the Bouchard brothers and Buck Dharma but no matter who it is the voices aren’t substantial enough. Now I’m not saying they realised that but the record does come with a second disc comprising an all instrumental version of the record. They kick things off with a fine Hawkwind sounding number in the shape of ‘Hothouse Flowers’. It’s one of the more powerful tunes here and sets you up for a diverse tour through spacerock territory. There’s a wee bit of Gong now and then, some synth driven tunes, the best of which is ‘Dark Dominion’ and plenty of detours into ambient, electronic and psych sounds.
There is a lot to enjoy here especially if you liked the Calvert era Hawklords approach to music mixed with some vintage Cult. It’s not essential but there is an awful lot for classic spacerock fans to enjoy.
CURRENTLY AVAILABLE FROM GONZO





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