Legendary rock band Hawkwind released their brand-new studio album, Stories From Time And Space, on the 5th of April. The group’s 36th studio album was mastered at Abbey Road Studios and follows their critically acclaimed 2023 album, The Future Never Waits.
Last year, the legendary rockers performed a much-celebrated show at the Royal Albert Hall as well as completing the recording of their forthcoming release. The band’s latest offering was completed on familiar ground. “We engineered and recorded it ourselves because we’ve got our own studio. And also, Tim Lewis, our keyboard player, is a Rockfield engineer. He works at Rockfield Studios,” explains Dave Brock. “I’ve been doing it for over 15 years. And Magnus is really clever on studio stuff, as well. So, between the three of us, it took us about a year after the last one.”
With an album name like Stories From Time And Space, there are some interesting themes on the space rocker’s latest release. “We came up with sci-fi stories. The first track on the album is about being old basically. And the next one’s about escaping into a spaceship to another planet called heaven where everything’s wonderful. There’s also one about a guy who sits in a tracking station, analysing sounds from other star systems to see if there’s life out there and so on and eventually, they come into contact with noises that when you put it through your computer, there’s another race trying to get in touch with us,” explains Dave.
Now on their 36th studio album, how does a band with such a long and successful career in the music industry keep things fresh and interesting for themselves? “All of us have got quite a lot of synthesisers. And I’ve got a lot of old stuff, and so has Tim. Tim has got a barn full of old keyboards and old synthesisers. And the same, I’ve got loads of audio generators that are all linked up. So, I’ve got a whole bank of audio generators,” confirms Dave. “You can switch maybe four different generators through two, as it were, and you can get these throbbing rhythms and all sorts of weird things going on, which it’s a bit like musique concrete, which came out in the 50s and 60s, quite Avant Garde electronics. So, we do things similar to that sometimes and use the machines to supply rhythms and then do weird stuff on top. So, that’s how we do it. We’re already on another album. Were on about the destruction of humans. I started going through human behaviour and the seven deadly sins.”
With such intricate sounds and equipment utilised in the band’s recordings, how do Hawkwind go about recreating these songs in the live environment? “Well, it’s very difficult. Were living under an age of computers. You could access vast amounts of sounds, like a whole orchestra. I mean, the day I found out I could plug my guitar into MIDI, and I can play drums, I can play a whole orchestra through my guitar it was like this fantastic door opened. And it changed everything,” said Dave.
Having produced and recorded the band’s new album themselves, did Hawkwind have a strong idea of how they wanted it to sound from the off? “Not really. We didn’t actually. It’s just like doing a painting except with sound,” says Dave. “It’s the same thing with music. Because you can do the same thing with sounds – you can change things. And if you add something else to it, it changes everything again. That’s how we work quite often like that. I went on the internet and bought some woodblocks – the old woodblocks that jazz drummers used to use in their 20s and 30s. And I bought them. And I said to Richard, why don’t you use these workbooks for a change? And he started playing, instead of bashing his drums, playing with woodblocks. And we could immediately make different sounds just by using a simple thing like woodblocks. And so, you can stick woodblocks through electronics, and so on. So, you see what I mean, you can change things. It’s good fun. As long as it’s fun as well, that’s what you’ve got to remember. We are supposed to be enjoying our life.”
One of the tracks from the Hawkwind repertoire which still receives airplay today is Silver Machine. But did the band know when they created the song that they were onto something special at the time? “Bob Calvert and I used to write a lot of stuff together. It was a basic rock and roll song, just going up from A to B and B to D, I think, and it was just one of those catchy things, and Bob wrote good lyrics to it. And Lemmy sang it, and that was it. We occasionally play it; we don’t always play it all the time. But occasionally,” said Dave.
With 36 studio albums behind them, choosing a setlist for the group’s forthcoming tour could prove a difficult task. “We’ve got a few new ones that we’re going to do. The fans like to hear a lot of the old stuff,” said Dave. “I’ve seen those bands who play a lot of their new stuff and people are kind of yearning and go, oh God, I wish they would play some of their old stuff. We do a mixture; you have to do a mixture. He adds: “We’ve got really good projections and lasers. So, it will be quite visual as well.”
Moving forward, Hawkwind will be promoting their new album out on the road. “We’re doing quite a few festivals. We are doing Northern Kin, and we’re doing one in France; we’re just carrying on. We try and do the things that we like to do, and if we can enjoy ourselves, that’s what we’re trying to do. I mean, we’re living in a time where it’s quite difficult because everything costs money. To hire a tour bus is so ridiculously expensive, and PA companies – I could go on. At the end of the day, it’s the musicians that get all this together. And people like the music, but then periphery around it all, it ends up with those people making money and the band being last to get paid.”
Stories From Time And Space by Hawkwind is out now.
Word by Adam Kennedy
Photo Credit: Press Supplied
