Space Ritual - Hawkwind classic space rock

Hawkwind - Space Ritual 1972

Space Ritual - recorded 1972 and released the next year,

hawkwind's "Space Ritual" double live album included what

is now considered to be the Classic lineup of the band.

Hawkwind are the first and foremost of the Space

Rock/Acid Rock movement; pioneering in both sound and

stage performance.The content of their music is textually

both psychedelic in terms of the universe it portrays, and

inspiring to anyone looking towards cosmic consciousness

as an exit route to the hell of everyday worldly banality. But

seriously folks (seriously?), Hawkwind's lyrics have both

enormity of meaning in the content and prose in the way

that poetic intermissions are inserted between some songs as

a 'Waypaving' for the mind to be in the right state and

thinking of the right thing when the main song begins.This is

part of the journey you partake in when you become a

dedicated passenger of spaceship hawkwind (a fan).
Hawkwind were largely responsible for the survival into the

seventies of the countercultural idealism that was born in the

sixties. Constantly performing live concerts and "Gigs"

(including five days playing for free outside of the isle of

wight festival in 1970).

A Hawkwind concert was not just a sonic experience;

Hawkwind were one of the first and few artists to use

"Multimedia performance" in those days, complimenting

your trip with visual effects and projections, smoke and

special sound effects, costumes and support artists such as

fire breathers & jugglers.
For me this album (along with Warrior on the edge of Time - 1974), encapsulates the spirit of Hawkwind...ancient spirits, spacecraft, reincarnation, Pleiadeian concepts fuelled by an inclination to the cosmology of ancient Egyptian lore in a kind of Futuristic Pyramid flying saucer infested galaxy inhabited by Lords of Time and perception known as the Hawklords.
The Hawklords and the message contained in the music of Hawkwind has become almost a religion so to speak.



Their music inpires both the journey into inner and also outer space. Futuristic, Ancient, spiritual...Cosmic.
A message to wake up and remember something we may have forgotten is subtly suggested behind many a hawkwind lyric, suggesting that the latest rumours of the alleged Nibiru/Planet - X prophecy may have some foundation in truth after all.
They averaged about one concert avery three days in the first years.

The album Space Ritual was a classic acid-rock masterpiece.

Delving into lyrical profundity with songs like the paradox-stirring 'Space is Deep", or the ancient bards and future prophecy wielding "Seven by Seven", stirring visions of druidic forefathers mounting their flying discs and zapping off into a far future that we cannot yet even begin to imagine...a certain beckoning sensation is recieved on the hearing end of this sonic message that is filtering through the annals of time using this cosmic poem as a medium.

This album evokes sensations of worlds that are both psychic/spiritual and at the same time technological. Futuristic Utopian Empires are envisioned as the synthesized effects and Cosmic-Egyptian guitar riffs enter the ears of the listener to reside as a visual emanation in the mind's eye of a glittering kingdom alive with glistening ships floating through the amber skies.

Some tracks take us to darker places such as the hibernation dreams of a space/time travelling

being (soul) in his capsule at the end of time that is portrayed in "The Awakening"

Links: Night of the Hawks 1984 (Youtube Video Clip)