Hawkwindforum

well finally i got round to buying and listening to this cd.. just the sinlge cd version so i cant comment on the live cd version,,
but blimey.. what a dissappointment.. !!
id read all the mixed reviews about this cd and after reading the mediocre reviews i wasnt sure what to expect.. but as a fan of the band for 25 years now i was sure they could do no wrong and that i wouldnt be let down .. but on listening to the cd i have to agree with the mediocre.. nothing on the cd sticks with me .. .. a few glimmers here and there ... but nothing even touches thier previous work..
and i cant say i was overly impressed with the mixdown/sound quality either.. sounded really muddy to my ears...
.. .. overall not that much more to say on the matter.. just dissappointed

Are you kidding ??

For me BOTE belongs to the TOP 5 studio albums made by Hawkwind !!!


Bernhard

Everyone has a different opinion and at the end of the day music is a personal thing.

That said, my opinion is more in line with Bernhard's. For me it's their most consistent studio album since probably Levitation, and the best produced/mixed in a similar time frame.

The live disc is ferocious, I really hope to get to see them in the winter tour - this lineup really has some power to it. For some reason they're not playing Cambridge this year though.

johnb wrote: nothing on the cd sticks with me .. .. a few glimmers here and there ... but nothing even touches thier previous work.. just dissappointed

Yeah I'd have to agree with that. Tried listening to it several times but doesn't do it for me at all. Still others seem to think its top drawer Hawkwind but not for me. I haven't played in in the last month or so whereas other newly released albums I bought about the same time have not been out of the car/mp3 player.

Anyhoo would be boring if we all liked the same thing!

A 3 star Hawkwind CD I find and I would put TMTYL higher and up there in terms of one of their best - think its underated.

I would put Blood On The Earth with Space Bandits and Xenon. Some good bits but overall lacking.

I didnt like the sequencing.

Green Machine is a stand out, Sentinel, Wraith good tracks too. Inner Visions is a grower.

I thought the sound/mix to be below par too and agree with johnB on that.

Sweet Obsessions and You Better Believe It are fillers. But its down to personal taste.

I still scratch my head as to the logic of restricting some of the tracks to bonus track on each format.

johnb wrote:well finally i got round to buying and listening to this cd.. just the sinlge cd version so i cant comment on the live cd version,,
but blimey.. what a dissappointment.. !!
id read all the mixed reviews about this cd and after reading the mediocre reviews i wasnt sure what to expect.. but as a fan of the band for 25 years now i was sure they could do no wrong and that i wouldnt be let down .. but on listening to the cd i have to agree with the mediocre.. nothing on the cd sticks with me .. .. a few glimmers here and there ... but nothing even touches thier previous work..
and i cant say i was overly impressed with the mixdown/sound quality either.. sounded really muddy to my ears...
.. .. overall not that much more to say on the matter.. just dissappointed

That was my impression too. There are some good ideas but overall not what I hoped for. And I agree 100% about the sound quality.

Guess we are all different. I love it.

Yes our tastes are different but they can change too. I liked TMTYL first listen then went off it but it has become one of my favourite later Hawkwind albums. BOTE I liked straight away and it hasn't dropped off for me but it's not one of my favourites.

sometimes things don't sound so good because of the era we're living in. For many years I loved Space bandits but it hasn't sounded so good for a long time now, but i bet it will sound fantastic again in a few years time.

Musically there are some really strong moments like the mid section of wraith , & green machine. I even like inner visions. Unfortunately I'm not so keen on dibs vocal style. For example Sentinel is a really strong song but I think the band should have played to their strengths and had Mr Brock do the lead vocals. As ever with a hawkind album theres a couple of duff tracks , an unecessary rehash and some "ambient fillers"

barnetquark wrote:Yes our tastes are different but they can change too. I liked TMTYL first listen then went off it but it has become one of my favourite later Hawkwind albums. BOTE I liked straight away and it hasn't dropped off for me but it's not one of my favourites.

sometimes things don't sound so good because of the era we're living in. For many years I loved Space bandits but it hasn't sounded so good for a long time now, but i bet it will sound fantastic again in a few years time.

True barnet....I also liked TMTYL from the beginning and In your Area + Distant Horizon too. Today there are just a few tracks ( 2 - 3, maybe 4 ) on each I really listen too. BOTE has 8 tracks which I think's phenomenal and hope it remains so for a long, long time
IMO it's a new era that has begun ( Dibs, Hone & Blake ) and maybe it was about time for that. Not to complain about A.Davey but I think he had done what he should/could and were in some "mood" to go further on his own stuff.... Ron Tree was good character, but IMO he did'nt fit right for all songs, Alien 4, Love in space was fabulous and he's vocals on In your area too.
So my point is BOTE has a total new, different style on many tracks which appeal right into my heart ....
I understand very well people who's tired of old re-recorded tracks ( sweet obsession, You'd better beleive it ), and I agree cause for me many tracks been re-recorded before ( Brainstorm, Assasins of allah, Sonic attack, Master of the universe, Utopia ++ ) actually are best in the original version - back where they belong , but some like new re-recordings..like me on BOTE...

Yes, it's funny how people differ.

I didn't like this album much, either, but I assume the album wasn't made for people like me. As so many people rate it so highly, the band must be doing something right.

One of Hawkwind's strengths is their ability to explore different areas and find a balance between being recognisably Hawkwind and trying new things. Different things will work for different people.

I'd expect Wraith and Tim's track to take on a different life at some point as live tracks with a different arrangement. They both have that potential. Then people will be able to argue over whether they've been improved or damaged.

I'm puzzled about the poor mixing in places, though. I recall muddy mixes in places, drums failing to cut through and so on. I wonder if maybe it sounds ok on some systems but not on others? Maybe Hawkwind need a few different monitors in their studio to check out how it's going to sound in different contexts? Or maybe there's so much poor mixing in `ambient' music generally that a bad mix sounds more natural than it should on an album with `ambient' stuff on it, and it seems right to some people's ears for that reason? Or maybe the people who like the album don't mind the occasional bad mix in what's for them an otherwise good album? It'd be interesting to know.

In the "modern" Hawkwind canon I would rank it well below records like Take Me to Your Leader and Electric Tepee, slightly below Alien 4 but well above Distant Horizons.

Of course you're absolutely at liberty to say whatever you like about your preferences with the music and band members. But I'm not sure Tim Blake's involvement is necessarily as much of a factor in Blood of the Earth as you're thinking it is. At least, as is well known, I'm a great admirer of Tim's work, and yet Blood of the Earth comes across to me as just as much of a weak album as you find it to be.

Granted I don't rate everything Tim's done equally highly, and I'm sure he's quite capable of recording something I'd hate. That's only reasonable. But nevertheless it seems likely that the `problems' with Blood of the Earth, for those of us who feel that way about it, may well not be massively due to Tim's involvement when at least one person who regards Tim's music highly finds the album weak.

Clearly you don't like Tim's involvement in the band anyway, based on other stuff, but as regards BOTE it seems at least likely that what you don't like isn't as traceable to Tim as you're thinking. We know what he wrote for the album, and pretty much what he played, but a group album tends to be a group effort - people play differently with different musicians, and they may arrive at quite complex results when pooling ideas.

My own view is that Dave Brock may have taken a little more of a back seat than before, but the album's most likely a group effort with a particular style in mind. That style appeals to some people but not others. But there's already forty years worth of other Hawkwind albums, for one thing, and the next one may well be nothing like BOTE. Regarding live gigs, the presence of band members you're not keen on will probably be a bit of a damper on things, but that's the case for everybody to some degree, as there's a wide range of different preferences about lineups.

Maybe just wait to see what the next album's like...?

well ive given it 4 listens now .. and without wanting to disect it track by track i have to say ( in my opinion and it looks like others too ) that this album rates at the bottom of the pile ..
if u can get to track 5 without beeen underwhelmed then the rest of the tracks (in my opinion )sound more like a band trying to be hawkwind.. totally dislike the new vocalist and listening to prometheus is just painful ... sorry guys..
.. i dont have a problem with the synth work as im a big lover of the more synthy sounding hawkwind.. but as has been stated above each track has the elements of something hawkwind.. but its like they dont quite pull it off ...
..
no real flow to this album unfortunatley. (which i always thought was one of the hawks strong points.).
ultimatley for me it is more a case of a hotch potch of track ideas that perhaps shoudnt have made it off the cutting room floor...
... ..it is a shame that harvey and alan and are not with the band anymore..
..with good old fashioned british humour i suggest an alternative title to this album
... This Is NOT Hawkwind...START PANICING !!!