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Album Details

• Artist: Hawkwind
• Album: Astounding Sounds, Amazing Music
• Label: Charisma
• Year of Release: 1976
• ME Rating:
• Reviewed by: gwhill on 2013-01-03

This is a unique album. In many ways it doesn’t really feel like a Hawkwind album. Indeed it is quite different from much of the rest of the band’s output. In some ways it is more purely progressive rock oriented than most of their catalog. Yet, there is also a punky sort of weirdness to a lot of the disc. It’s no wonder why a lot of Hawkind fans don’t think highly of the album yet there are others who consider it the group’s best. This is the kind of release that will polarize your fans. Think what you like of it (I like it a lot) but you can’t easily ignore it.

None of the songs on the disc became runaway Hawkwind classics, but the two openers come close to the classic status in the group’s catalog. Those two are the prog, meets jazz, meets pop rock of “Reefer Madness” and the Hawkwind does Santana sound of “Steppenwolf.” Both songs have a lot more going on than those descriptions reveal, though. In fact, in some ways the music on this disc is among the most complex of just about any Hawkwind album. One other that has gotten some traction in the Hawkwind catalog is “Kerb Crawler.” It’s got R & B oriented backing vocals and a rather raw edged arrangement, but is still quite entertaining.
    
Among the other less classic tunes is “City of Lagoons” which is an instrumental with blues and jazz merging with Pink Floyd and the Grateful Dead. The title “Aubergine That Ate Rangoon” is odd, but so is the song. It’s another instrumental and has weird rhythmic elements along with saxophone and backwards tracked bits in the arrangement. “Kadu Flyer” seems to combine a very prog-like arrangement with punky vocals. There is quite a bit of psychedelia in the mix, too. “Chronoglide Skyway” is the closing instrumental piece and while a bit jazzy at times, feels a bit like Hawkwind melded with Genesis. All in all, this might not be the most classic Hawkwind album, but it’s quite a good one.

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