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Here we have a rather underloved quartet of albums from the multiverse-sized corpus of Ladbroke Grove’s finest: The Business Trip Live, Alien 4, Love In Space, Distant Horizons.
There was at least some relative stability in Hawkwind’s mid-90s line-up, alhough bassist Alan Davey’s tenure would be up at the end of this period. With new vocalist Ron Tree in the ascendancy, the Venn-diagram crossover threw up the best of the bunch: the punchy two-disc live album Love In Space. Early signs of Tree’s suitability for the role can be detected in The Camera That Could Lie, a not entirely credible cod-reggae workout channelling the crusty heights of 1989’s Traveller’s Aid Trust album (a compact capsule of the free festival/convoy scene) on which Tree’s former band 2000DS were co-conspirators.
Although all the narrative aesthetics – abduction, blue skin, space sex – are present and correct on 1995’s Alien 4, the inevitable comparisons with Robert Calvert are not entirely in Tree’s favour, unfairly hampered by a notable lack of musical ideas; more X-Files than Xenomorphs. Fortunately the live version of the album (Love In Space) cherry-picks the best and dials up the heft, revealing previously hidden facets. Davey’s Sputnik Sam is the throbbing pop-rock highlight, while trademark oscillators and cosmic bleepage plot directly back to the glory days of Space Ritual.
Article continues belowBy Distant Horizons, Tree’s absorption into the mothership was complete, bringing a punky abrasion to the by now trance-heavy table. And with it, another new, if short-lived metier.
