STEVE HILLAGE

Steve Hillage begins his solo career with one of the greatest albums of the progressive and psychedelic rock era. Much of the material for this album was written years earlier, even before Hillage joined Gong for their classic "Radio Gnome Invisible" trilogy. Parts were originally meant to be on the sophomore Khan record, Hillage's earlier jazzy, Canterbury style band. Seeing as Hillage was still a member of Gong when recording this album, the rest of the band joins him to carve out his vision. The result is a jaw-dropping spaced out wonder.

The bulk of the record is taken up by three multi-part epics, starting with the highlight "Solar Musick Suite". This 17- minute opus developed from a song originally played with Khan and then Gong, and here it is in its fully fleshed out glory, taking up almost the entire first side of the LP. Hillage and the band move through many different moods, textures and tempos with graceful ease, playing with time in a way not many musicians can. Hillage's lyrics are idealistic new age spiritual hippy themes, which can be an aquired taste. The song moves through mellow parts, knotty parts and eases into great grooves that let Hillage rip on the Gitfish, culminating in a ferociously intense jam that brings to mind an extremely psychedelic Mahavishnu Orchestra. "Fish" and "Meditation of the Snake" serve as an interlude to the other mega compositions of the record, ending the first side or "Inglid".

The second side "Outglid" begins with the Hillage concert staple "The Salmon Song". If there was a radio single from this album, it's this 8 and a half minute aquatic rocker. With a straightforward rock riff this is the most conventional song on the record. Theres another mind-bending complex part in the middle before the main riff comes back in and Hillage once again takes it into the stratosphere with an amazing solo. The last song might be the most complex, with the 7 part "Aftaglid". This track moves through many different sections; loose jams, polyrhythmic chaos, pastoral acoustics, Middle-Eastern mantras, and glorious freak outs. The song builds to yet another intense jam and brings the album to a very satisfying conclusion.

Steve Hillage has created a masterpiece of a record, one of the last breaths of the original progressive and psychedelic rock era. His later albums would all follow the Zen filled vibes of this album, but never quite reach the psychedelic heights of this.4.5 great debut from one of the best canterbury guitarists. FISH

1. Solar Musick Suite in 4 parts starting with a slightly psychedelic rock pop from the 60s, well that was the period; a variation that is searching for a while, between blues and pop love song before the passage of the second at 3 minutes; heavy riff suddenly, the crimsonian sax raising the sauce even more, the vocals remind me of JUDAS PRIEST at their start, in the same period; marshmallow air love song that maintains itself; the drift to Canterbury is done without a hitch, as CARAVAN knew so well how to do, an extension of the original sound with its progressive framework; the 3rd beat wants to be hard for... the time, the guitar seems to possess, remaining in the rock territory, but a wild rock with an apoplectic rise. The finale with a return to the verse, look at the first BARCLAY JAMES HARVEST, soft, languorous with Dave's keyboards, increasing the new-age side before its time; standard piece made with Steve letting his notes twirl.

2. Fish with the aqueous intro, obvious; flute and rock-jazzy approach with the sax of KING CRIMSON expressive, shrill, avant-garde, used today for the cinematic interlude before its time 3. Meditation of the Snake starts with the reverberant side, psychedelic much more than Canterburyen; the guitar talks and will get lost on a cozy shore.

4. The Salmon Song in 4 parts too, a tenacious rock atmosphere from the start; it calms down quite quickly by starting on a rock drift to LOU REED, stamped with the guitars that talk to each other; Pierre's drums become frenetic, GONG, Mike OLDFIELD will be his future groups. Miquette comes to give voice to the finale which gets carried away, going into possession mode.

5. Aftaglid and the last piece with a soaring atmosphere that goes to HAWKWIND for the air, the rest is done with Steve who bellows, shears, slices with his guitar; the soaring psyche is doubled by a trans air before its time; the drawers do not see themselves passed, except for the one with the acoustic arpeggio hitting our ears for the softness suffered; a psyche-oriental break for the smoking guitar in the distance which like the Pytie comes to preach to the depths of the Heavens. Halfway through and the tone becomes solemn, flirting precisely with the atmospheres of the great PINK FLOYD in their psychedelic period; this is too much for Steve who takes the course again by letting his notes decline along the bass held by Mike while Didier switches to the sax rather than the oriental flute on this mantranic passage. The guitar spurts, a stronger rhythm and we would move on to hard, like what everything is a question of vibration, creation and listening. The finale with the repetitive chorus to continue to dance blissfully on this languorous air; a small finale that amplifies, Steve adds a small solo, one more to bewitch. Minimalist outro reverberating once again, piece that moves away radically from Canterbury to approach space rock.

Overall, the music in this album is just okay and I thin I am being generous. The opener is really weird, I didn't like it. But it wasn't the worst I've heard, yet. Electrick Gypsies sounds like it could be fine, except for when Hillage "sings" the chorus. It takes you right out of the music, which isn't good to begin with. He sounds like he is talking, but also trying to sing? It's really something else. The rest of the tracks don't do any better. Yes he can play guitar, but what good is it if the rest of the music sucks? Hopefully the other albums turn out better. Two stars for this album.

Initially slated to be one half of the double release "The Red Album / The Green Album" which was nixed in favor of reworking the material into two separate albums, "The Red Album" ended up being released as "Motivation Radio" in 1977 whereas GREEN which was recorded simultaneously followed the year later. STEVE HILLAGE became fairly famous in the UK after the success of his second album "L" which actually peaked at number 10 on the albums charts. The ambitious drive to release a double album was due to a surge of creativity that took place with his songwriting partner Miquette Giraudy who also had been contributing his synthesizer duties since "Fish Rising."

HILLAGE's fourth album GREEN pretty much followed in the footsteps of "Motivation Radio" however this time around was graced with the production and engineering skills of Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason who had found time between the massive "Animals" tour and the recording sessions that would lead up to "The Wall." Experimenting with guitar synthesizers for the first time, GREEN offered a unique mix of the funk-based more mainstream rock sounds as heard on "Motivation Radio" only this time around the excessive space rock and glissando glory first experienced on "Fish Rising" were resurrected in full force to craft a unique mix of the various stylistic approaches that HILLAGE had been streamlining since he went solo.

GREEN delivered that perfect mix of riff-based guitar rock that HILLAGE had initiated on the "L" album along with the ethereal atmospheres generated through an arsenal of guitar synths and keyboard techniques. The "Fish Rising" psychedelic grooves made a full reprise culminating on the closing "The Glorious Om Riff" which would've sat comfortably on HILLAGE's vintage space rock debut. The album begins with the pacifying "Sea Nature" which focuses on HILLAGE's propensity of crafting abstract esoteric subject matter of spirituality, science fiction and fantasy realms along with a sense of giddy optimism reminiscent of the hippie era. The tracks alternate between accessible funk-fueled space rock with pure ethereal excursions into instrumental otherworldly segues.

"Ethereal Ships" for example employs HILLAGE's love for glissando guitar extravaganzas with jittery clusters of sound that slowly ooze on into the cosmos before the track breaks into a guitar funk finale. The use of clean guitar effects and more standard space rock procedures allowed the Floydian influences of Nick Mason to shine through on various tracks such as "Musick Of The Trees" and "Palm Trees (Love Guitar)." The wild card of the album is the pure funk based "Unidentified (Flying Being)" which commingles with HILLAGE's most tripped out guitar techniques which makes for an oddball playground of styles that somehow works fairly well.

While too much of the "Motivation Radio" funk based grooves may have derailed the album's momentum, HILLAGE follows with the synthesizer-laden twofold cosmic excursion set of "U.F.O. Over Paris" and the celestial sublimity of "Leylines To Glassdom." The album really just gets better and better til the end with the metaphysical musings of "Crystal City" before launching off into the furtherest reaches of the cosmos with the closing combo pack psychedelic jaunt of "Activation Meditation" and the "Fish Rising" inspired "The Glorious Om Riff" which perfectly summarizes the album's overall effectiveness.

GREEN is one of HILLAGE's best moments with a well-crafted roster of diverse tracks that span his arsenal of tricks and trinkets that he had been crafting since his days with Arzachel, Khan and Gong as well as the affluence of sound effects and experiments that were crafted for the making of this album. A dynamic range of musical styles amalgamated into an alchemy of excellence were the glorious results. The production and mixing of Nick Mason also elevates GREEN to the next level of magnificence and the perfect mix of mystical themed lyrics in cahoots with psychedelic excursions that find just enough grounding funk rock to keep the project from escaping the complete gravitational pull of our planet ensures that this album flows amazingly well from beginning to end. GREEN is my favorite HILLAGE release after the superior masterwork debut "Fish Rising" which he would never top.

By 1977 former Gong guitarist STEVE HILLAGE was well on his own path with a successful solo career building momentum but as the age of prog was ceding to a new era of funk, punk and disco, HILLAGE became irritated with many prog snobs snubbing the new up and coming genres and limiting his musical expressions to the world of progressive rock. In his own expressions of rebellion and breaking free from any such pigeonholing attempts, HILLAGE delivered a new sound on his third album MOTIVATION RADIO which found as much inspiration from Funkadelic and Earth, Wind & Fire as from Gong or Pink Floyd.

Unable to shake his space rock connections completely, MOTIVATION RADIO offered a unique mix of danceable funk rock steeped with the usual glissando guitar fueled psychedelia and art rock. The album also added a bit of punkish guitar heft that surely must've thrown the prog snobs for a loop when this hit the scene. While the funk rock moves dominate the guitar, bass and drum rhythm sections, HILLAGE hired Malcom Cecil from Tonto's Expanding Head Band to produce and engineer the album which in the process kept many of the trippiest moments of classic Gong alive and well. Likewise HILLAGE's vocal delivery is very reminiscent of Daevid Allen's best Gong moments so apparently he was indelibly marked by the experience for life.

This album offered an interesting mix of tracks with some like the opening "Hello Dawn" shouting the fact that HILLAGE had totally funked up his fans sh.i.t and delivered a major curveball but it doesn't take long for his psychedelic roots to steal the show such as the Gong-esque "Light In The Sky" that narrates the arrival of UFOs complete with all those freaky psychedelic excursions heard on "Angel's Egg" and "You" even with a surrogate Gilli Smyth offering some space whispering. Some tracks like "Wait One Moment" take on a Pink Floyd flavor with a chilled space rock sound that reminds me of "Comfortably Numb" from "The Wall" but obviously two years before that album would emerge.

Of all the tracks on board, "Saucer Surfing" is the closest thing to HILLAGE's masterwork "Fish RIsing" with the same trippy layers of glissando guitar accompanying the overly mystical and esoteric lyrics that sometimes border on ridiculous but reflected the new age and Eastern philosophical interests that dominated the 60s and 70s. "Searching For The Spark" prognosticates the style of what Ozric Tentacles would make a career out of and its not unthinkable that the band was inspired by the unique electronica that dances around in a hypnotic yet cyclical manner. "Octave Dancers" must've really rankled prog stalwarts because it almost sounds like dancy disco only with a funk groove yet features STEVE's classic glissando workouts as well as bluesy guitar licks. The closing "Not Fade Away (Gild Forever)" ends the album with rather bluesy funky space rock vibe.

This is an album that i never really liked a lot until i let it sink under my skin. Sure it's not HILLAGE's best of the lot by a long shot but it certainly does deliver some entertaining moments. Like many the funk and simplicity that didn't measure up to "Fish Rising" rubbed me the wrong way but as i've listening to it more and more it certainly has grown on me in a weird way. There are lots of clever moments on this and the production is amazingly crisp and clear (granted i have the 2000 remaster). Sure HILLAGE's vocal performances range from classic Daevid Allen to sometimes sounding like Devo and even a touch of new wave but ultimately the space mix and HILLAGE's own signature style tips it all in my favor of liking it more. Not his magnus opus but personally i like this one better than "L."

A 3.5 star album but i like it enough to round up to 4

Review #138!

Ethereal, spiritual, magical. Incredibly fluid (the non- Newtonian kind!) and solid at the same time, flowing Incredibly well through every second of each suite, yet rocking and jazzing incredibly hard at its core. Funky, psychedelic, stoned, jazzy, absolute insane masterpiece. Steve Hillage and his guitar are inseperable, them playing together in harmony at every key and every note. I liked this more than any thing (and they have some billion albums out, that means a lot) the Gong ever done! And in my opinion, that is for all the right reasons. Here Steve Hillage seems more free than he ever was before. This honestly seems like a lost Gong relic or some mysterious outtake collection from Santana's spiritual jazz period that just didn't make the cut. 'Solar Musick Suite' is a masterful guitar-led jazz-rock, 'Fish' is a goofy one-minute ditty, 'Meditation...' is an ethereal guitar solo with synth undertones, 'The Salmon Song' is a slow- building, pure rock (borderline post-metal!) jamming mini- suite, and 'Aftaglid' is a hard-rocking eclectic groove-session of a song. What I'm trying to get at 8s that this album is mad. Mad amazing! Prog on.

The cover design of this single circulates the same graphics as Steve Hillage's fourth album Green (1978), but in fact only the B side song was taken from it. Hillage's version of the Beatles song 'Getting Better' -- which appeared on Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967) -- wasn't originally included on his next rock album Open (1979) either. It is, however, one of the five bonus tracks on the 1990 CD remaster of Open.

I have come across some various artists compilations covering Beatles songs but I hadn't heard this one before. Truth to be told, if you remember the original song and are familiar with Hillage's style, you already have a very good idea of how it sounds. The glissando guitar and the spacey synths, they're all here. There's also a dance-inviting boogie groove in the rhythm section. Personally I prefer the Beatles original, at least for the vocals, because Hillage isn't a great singer in my opinion.

'Palm Trees (Love Guitar)' is a good representative from Green. Actually it's among the album's many highlights, helped by the relatively small amount of vocals. The guitar work is brilliant and the hazy, laid back summer feel is very enjoyable.

Both the album Green and the single 'Getting Better' were co-produced by Pink Floyd's drummer Nick Mason. Excellent collaboration indeed.

"Fish Rising", the 1975 LP from Hillage, is quite simply a lovely record. Full of beautiful guitar textures, spacey vibes, and thoughtful and spiritual lyrics.

Truly a must-have record for the guitarists out there into Prog and Psych, as well as European and Canterbury Prog scene fans. There are wondrous sounds at every turn. Layered guitars awash with modulation effects create beautiful clean melodies and arpeggios, then the next moment a meaty distorted guitar breaks and wails lyrical leads. This aspect of the LP is the highlight for me, but there is so much more as well.

Synth sequences and oscillator sounds float through the background of the "Solar Musick Suite", the first track and a highlight for sure. While there is fabulous layering and depth to the instrumentation, it leaves space between the parts and never feels busy.

There a rich tapestry of guest appearances on here--Lindsay Cooper (Henry Cow, Comus, National Health), and Dave Stewart (Egg, National Health, Khan, Hatfield and the North) as well as several Gong members. The musicianship is outstanding and the sounds they create engrossing. While it can seem at times that the record is primarily an instrumental tour-de-force, there are plentiful and interesting lyrics throughout, often sung in unassuming fashion and mixed a bit low so that they blend into the instruments. The words paint a vision of togetherness and growth--humanity's connection to a spirit of the world, of our consciousness. That said, they also have a sense of levity and a dash of absurdity that keeps them from being heavy-handed and overly lofty.

"The Salmon Song" at times feels as if it is one long guitar solo, but its middle section--a Zappa-esque instrumental interlude--is outstanding. "Aftaglid" is intense. That seems like the easiest way to describe it. Seemingly innocuous bouncing guitar notes that repeat lead into a heavy and rocking section of overdriven, fuzzed-out guitars wet with tape delay, great textural synth work, and visceral drumming the all come together to make you want to bang your head. Following that, a beautiful and pastoral melodic section with acoustic guitar and ambient textures provide a welcome contrast as it rides you off into a swirling multi-colored sunset.

There's plenty to love about this--what many consider his best solo work?and thus it should come highly recommended to add to your collection. How Hillage is not incredibly famous the world over as a preeminent guitarist on the level of Page, Clapton, Beck, and Hendrix is beyond me. An outstanding work of excellence, with great sleeve art to boot.

"We've explored the infinite circuitry. To try and find a scheme that gave us form It burns our curiosity. And the answers that we sit and hope to find Are living here inside of we." -- "Sun Song", from Solar Music Suite

After Daevid Allen left Gong following the band's epic classic "You" which concluded the hippie prog adventures on "The Radio Gnome Invisible Trilogy," STEVE HILLAGE decided to stick around and continue his spaced out glissando guitar antics on Pierre Moerlen's newest rendition of the Gong universe. Despite a noble effort things got a little to hard to handle with all the changes and having just found a major score with his own debut "Fish Rising," HILLAGE decided to forge ahead as a solo artist rather than endure the drama of the band situation he found himself in at the time.

In most ways, "Fish Rising" was a continuation of the sound that Hillage helped pioneer on Gong's albums "Angel's Egg" and "You" and since it was recorded while he was still a participating member, many of the musicians from Gong joined in to transmogrify a wealth of material left over from HILLAGE's Khan days into full-on progressive space rock astral rockers. While the album didn't quite have a universal commercial appeal, it was and remains a veritable classic of the world of 1970s progressive rock but when it came to following up with second solo offering, HILLAGE had to start from scratch without his Gong connections to steer him through.

The result was the album L which found HILLAGE trading in members from Gong for members of Todd Rundgren's Utopia. The album was in fact recorded in New York produced by Rundgren himself who had made quite a name for himself as a producer. Given the slicker crossover prog of Rundgren and his band Utopia, it's no surprise that L itself followed suit with several more direct tracks that sprawled less and enticed with heavier guitar workouts yet still embraced the new age hippie ethos that HILLAGE had willfully inherited from the Gong-o-sphere. While the album did indeed hit the #10 position on the album charts in his native UK and having become his most successful album commercially, for HILLAGE's prog fans this album was somewhat of a disappointment.

First of all, of the six tracks on board, three are covers leaving only half of the album to feature HILLAGE's own distinct compositional fortitude. The rather strange opener "Hurdy Gurdy Man" showcased a palatable cover of Donovan's classic hit but also cast a dubious spell as to whether Mr HILLAGE could continue to forge a career in the footsteps of his amazingly creative and mind-expanding debut. The following "Hurdy Gurdy Glissando" is a return to form sounding as if it indeed could've been slipped into the debut's effortless flow but also sounds a bit out of sync with the psychedelic pop sensibilities of the Donovan cover.

The beautiful "Electrick Gypsies" is perhaps one of the best tracks with HILLAGE's poetic prose accompanied by glistening guitar antics and guest musician Don Cherry's ominous trumpet sounds. The track features excellent space rock guitar effects and a more blues rock approach to HILLAGE's solos. Continuing down the hippie eccentrics of the 60s, "Om Nama Shivaya" which is a traditional Hindu mantra brings some raga rock to the table which featured a vocal accompaniment by Miquette Giraudy who presumably serves as HILLAGE's counterpart in the classic Gilli Smyth role as space whisperer. While not bad, the track suffers from a bit of cheesiness as HILLAGE's once magnanimous composiitons had been tamped down to more digestible units.

Side Two on the original LP captures the closest vibe to "Fish Rising" with the excellent "Lunar Musick Suite" only turned up a few notches with faster tempos and a heavier rock heft. Still though, the dueling guitar licks are right out of the "Fish Rising" playbook making this 12 minute track another highlight of L. This one is the most progressive as well with loads of time signature deviations, space rock atmospherics and even an excellent trumpet solo from Don Cherry who brings his jazz sensibilities to the table in perfect form and gives this album a much needed upgrade in the stylistic approach of the debut. This track really should've been the template for the entire album to revolve around. Finishing the album is the George Harrison cover "It's All Too Much" which prognosticates the more poppy direction HILLAGE would visit in the future with simple electronic drumbeats and catchy verse / chorus arrangements. Not bad but doesn't fit on this album overall.

In the end, L fell a few steps down from the perfection of "Fish Rising." Whereas the debut made seamless transitions with an epic flow to its trajectory, L on the other hand sounds stilted with clunky covers oafishly sitting next to three excellent originals therefore i have never been able to get into this second album as a whole. True that even the covers are well performed and adequately adapted to HILLAGE's unique idiosyncrasies however the problem lies in the fact that the album doesn't flow smoothly like its predecessor. If the album started out with the superb "Lunar Musick Suite" and then built off of that established sound, L could've been a worthy successor to the debut but unfortunately HILLAGE seemed to want to distance himself from his Gong days and forge a new commercial path as the tides in the music industry were beginning to shift around the year 1976. While it may have made sense at the time, by today's classic prog standards L just doesn't have the mojo magic that "Fish Rising" had in abundance. No true HILLAGE fan will find this album missing from the collection because there is plenty on here to love but unfortunately it signaled the decline in HILLAGE's do-no-wrong days.

3.5 rounded down

If the angels in heaven above were to relinquish their harps in favour of electric guitars and ARP synthesizers, they would surely sound like Steve Hillage and Miquette Giraudy on this album. Rainbow Dome Musick is the ultimate culmination of the tripped-out celestial soundscapes with which Hillage had made a name for himself throughout the decade, taken here to their extreme: no drums, no vocals, just a blissful atmosphere, stretched across two side-long compositions. Track 1, "Garden Of Paradise", may not sound too special by today's standards, but it is beautifully done: starting from a collection of nature sounds and sweet electric piano tones, it develops very slowly into something that sounds like a Berlin School track without a pulse, with loads of sequenced synth arpeggios washing over the listener until Hillage's guitar roars wonderfully on top of it all. However, it is the second track "Four Ever Rainbow" that makes this album truly timeless: the guitar sounds like something from another planet, being processed through so many filters and pedals that it becomes an indistinct mass of consonance. The chord changes that ensue from this mass are magical, and the piece finally settles on the record's sole moment of rhythmic pulsation with a final synth melody in E major, which eventually devolves into arrhytmic synth and guitar glissandos as the piece fades out. This is a true masterpiece of space rock and ambient music.