Newly released on Gonzo, this album
captures the Steve
Hillage Band live at London’s Rainbow Theatre in
November 1977, and as such invites immediate comparison with the established
classic Live Herald, which dates from the same period, and indeed one
track, “Electrick Gypsies,” is actually taken from the same gig as the one
presented here. Aside from that single overlap, however, there’s much less
similarity between the two releases than one might expect, largely because of
the line-up.
who bring a funky groove to the material and infuse
it with oomph and life
Unlike the expanded musical formations on some of
theLive Herald tracks, the Steve Hillage Band documented here is a
stripped-down four-piece, comprising Hillage himself on guitar and vocals, his
long-term partner Miquette Giraudy on keyboards, and an
all-American rhythm section of Curtis Robertson (bass)
and Joe Blocker (drums). The lack of extra musicians means that
the baroque extended instrumental blow-outs that characterised Hillage’s earlier
solo albums are conspicuously absent (“Salmon Song,” for example, is condensed
into just three minutes) and there’s also a different emphasis in terms of
material, with more selections from Motivation Radio, Hillage’s third
solo album, and rather fewer from his better known first two albums, Fish
Rising (recorded in 1975 while he was still a member of Gong) and L.
Indeed on first scanning the track listing I felt a little disappointed by this
– Motivation Radio being, for me, the weakest of these releases – but
here the versions of songs from that album comfortably better their studio
incarnations, largely thanks to the aforementioned rhythm section, who bring a funky groove to the material and infuse
it with oomph and life.
Unlike
his erstwhile bandmate Daevid Allen,
who spent the late ’70s enthusiastically embracing punk and New Wave, seeing
them as the latest manifestations of the eternal rebel yell, Hillage remained
unrepentantly hippy-dippy, peppering his songs with wide-eyed references to
crystals, ley lines, UFOs, and energy fields – the whole panoply of the
burgeoning New Age movement, for which he was pretty much the house musician at
this time. Even his most indulgent fans have probably found themselves cringing
at some of this over the years, although here the clunkiest lyrics of all are
those of “Motivation,” which comes off as a queasy meeting of Glastonbury-style
“alternative spirituality” and twenty-first century management-speak ( I suppose
you could argue he was ahead of some curve). Then there’s his singing voice,
which was never the best, although vocally he’s in pretty good shape here –
certainly better than the only time I saw the SHB live, which was decades later
in 2009, a performance that featured Steve playing sublime guitar but singing
like a walrus with toothache.
the actual song is dispensed with fairly quickly so
that the band can get on with the main business of soaring into the
stratosphere
But none of that’s really important since nobody, I assume,
listens to Steve Hillage primarily for vocals or lyrics, but rather for his
extraordinary guitar playing. And on that count this album scores very highly
indeed. On most of the tunes as played here the actual song is dispensed with fairly quickly so
that the band can get on with the main business of soaring into the
stratosphere, the engines powered by that aforementioned fat funky
groove, while Hillage plays gorgeous, swooping liquid lead lines. He’s a
technical virtuoso, but never lapses into sterile muso chops, combining his
dexterity with warmth, soul, and a unique style which seems to owe as much to
Arabic or Indian scales and modes as it does to conventional rock guitar. Around
him, the rest of the band mesh quite beautifully at times, and the best parts of
this album capture that indefinable, undeniable magic of musicians locking
together to produce a whole several orders of magnitude greater than the sum of
its parts. It’s also intriguing to note the combination of Miquette Giraudy’s
spacey electronics and the danceable rhythms and realise that this is probably
the seed of Hillage and Giraudy’s psychedelic techno excursions as System 7 over a
decade later.
The
sound quality is excellent – thankfully this isn’t one of those archive live
releases that turns out to be a shoddy bootleg – and there’s a booklet with some
contemporary pictures of the band and what appears to be a miniaturised scan of
the 1977 Steve Hillage Band tour programme, though sadly the magnifying glass
required to read this isn’t included. It’s a quality release, unlikely to win
any new fans perhaps; but for existing devotees, this is a must.
-Haunted
Shoreline-
CURRENTLY AVAILABLE FROM GONZO
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