By the time this album was released in 1971 I was already an avid Science Fiction fan. I'd begun reading the classic post war authors Asimov, Clarke, Delaney. I'd also read loads of Micheal Moorcock, an enthusiast for his fantasy novels like Stormbringer and the Eternal Champion series. I don't think Moorcock's involvement in the band drew me towards Hawkwind. There was a sort of happy synchronicity along the way. This became inevitable when Silver Machine became a huge hit in 1972. I officially joined the ranks of becoming a Hawkwind fan, and had an embroidered Hawkwind badge sewn onto my jean bomber jacket.
Hawkwind had been going since 1969 and had built up a substantial following on the hippy festival circuit. They literally performed anywhere to anyone who would have them. Initially a ramshackle and invariably spontaneous gathering of scruffy haired individuals, who would improvise together. They gradually turned into a regular tighter band, with its own specific vision for itself. Dave Brock and Nick Turner were the central driving force in that, even though they clashed and fell out an awful lot. Ever the hippy's, whether they should cash in on Silver Machine's success, became just one of many divisive issues, besides petty jealousies.
In Search of Space was recorded by the quintessential lineup that included Lemmy, the poet Robert Calvert and dancer Stacia. It was to be followed later, fueled on music business optimism alone, by a two disc live album Space Ritual, where ideas that had only seemed a provisional sketch on In Search of Space, through misguided ambition became seriously over-puffed profundity. In the end their was a substantial rift in the band, members left, including Lemmy. but the band reformed itself. As it has continued to do so, reformulating itself countless times over the decades. almost as if Hawkwind as an entity can never be allowed to die.
The relative containment of its vision on In Search of Space makes it cohesively hold together better. Though it still has moments where it veers into 'clumsily handled profundity'. Its their reputation for being shambolic and rift prone, that leads to them being generally underestimated as musical innovators in their heyday, and since. They could fit quite neatly into the sort of improvised stream of consciousness collective jams of the late hippy era. But at that time what they were attempting felt distinctly new, they were powering up an endlessly pounding warp drive.
In Germany, avant guard wave of bands, such as Neu, were developing the constant 'motorik' beat that was to almost become standard across the emerging genre. Amongst these pioneering experimental German bands was Amon Duul 2, who are perhaps Hawkwind's nearest musical continental cousin. Emerging out of an 'anyone who turns up can play' collective, with a similar penchant for long running trips of spacey improvisations. Its no big stretch of the imagination to see that what Hawkwind were doing here in the UK was not dissimilar. For sure they lacked the controlled purity of some of them. Being British, Hawkwind evolved, in the same way you untangle a muddle of yarn -in a chaotic frustrated manner. Nevertheless they honed their signature playing style into this formidable engine of endlessly forward moving propulsion. Albeit with spacey screeches, bleeps and vast ascending notes to the stars, exploding and echoing all around it.
To a young naive science fiction buff, into progressive rock, Hawkwind were a beautifully wrapped gift to my nascent imagination. Over puffed profundity is to a teenage boys ears high minded ideology. I listen to this music now with older, perhaps differently attuned ears. And what I hear today is a band experimenting with how making slight adjustments in emphasis changed the whole tone and effect, whilst the constantly pounding drums, the thrash 'n crash of groaning guitar riffs, went on and on, as though on eternal over drive. Phasing in chanting and moaning background voices, flutes and saxophones woven in then out of its musical fabric. The opening track of the album, You Shouldn't Do That, at fifteen minutes plus long, is an excellent demonstration of this technique.
Hawkwind are often considered a bit of a one trick pony, in that once discovered and mastered, this propulsive rhythm is all they ever seemed to do. Their execution of it was undoubtedly well polished. Give them the time and space, they could fluidly take you anywhere in the cosmos on the back of their musical constellation. One long raw driving grunge infused riff at a time. I love it still, every clunky imperfection and poorly conceived ideas 'n' all.
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