LEVITATION

Finally, Hawkwind put priority on music over drugs, melody over beat, sound over noise. This album has everything most of the earlier Hawkwind albums completely lacked - memorable songs, good musicianship, melodic sensibilities, good production, even some decent lyrics are featured! All this puts Levitation far above all other Hawkwind albums (that I have heard so far, anyway).

Huw Lloyd-Langton's lead guitar work is strong throughout and there are even some discrete acoustic guitars parts present! The acoustic intro/outro of The 5th Second Of Forever is particularly worthy of special mention. The drumming on this album is by none other than Ginger Baker and his contribution is miles away from the repetitive and often unimaginative drumming of the early Hawkwind albums. Tim Blake's keyboards are mainly spacy, but sometimes he manages to be somewhat symphonic too. The bass guitar is also well played but the vocals are perhaps not very impressive, but nothing here is sloppy like it was on those early albums. This was a short lived, but musically successful line up of the band.

The title track, Motorway City, Who's Gonna Win The War, The 5th Second Of Forever and Dust Of Time are the proper songs of the album, the rest being instrumental interludes. Space Chase really lives up to its title and is the best of the instrumentals here, but none of them are bad at all.

This is one of the very few Hawkwind albums that I like, but it is a great one!

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