Hawkwind’s The Future Never Waits is, remarkably, their thirty-fifth studio album and with the constant presence of Dave Brock at the helm approaching his 82nd year on the planet.
Thinking about it, I discovered the Hawks in the late 1970s with Quark, Strangeness and Charm and the glorious run of albums from back then when in their pomp. Though I dropped out for years after Chronicle of the Black Sword before coming back again a few years ago with The Machine Stops.
Anyway – enough of the brief history lesson. What about The Future Never Waits? It clock in at a mighty hour and a quarter or so for the ten tracks and is on the whole Hawkwind at their best mixing in that classic, chugging, hypnotic, rhythmic Brock guitar riffing accompanied by the spacey keys/synths with some clever ambient stuff too. Special note to Richard Chadwick’s drumming. Very solid.
The title track starts things off. Took me a bit by surprise on first listen with it being a bit of a rambling ten minutes or so of meandering ambient sounds which at that running time goes on far too long.
The End is next up. Proper classic Hawkwind No mistaking it. Brock’s trademark churning riffs stiffened by Chadwick’s excellent drumming. It’s 1975 again….! Superb.
Aldous Huxley is a bit weird with the voice sampling spoken words with the typical Hawkwind synth noodling. Made me think a bit of a Sonic Attack as it’s sort of similar.
They’re So Easily Distracted is another lengthy instrumental (well, one line of lyric right towards the end) which sounds much like hotel lounge background music with some guitar noodling in the later stages. Reminded me somewhat of say The Aubergine That Ate Rangoon from the Astounding Sounds album.
Next up is the wonderful Rama (The Prophecy). This one’s up there with any Hawkwind track you’d care to mention. Spacey, hypnotic, expansive chugging along with some prophetic lyrics. Proper Hawkwind. Have a listen:
USB1 another instrumental though this one much more meaty that the previous two before the trio of I’m Learning to Live Today, The Beginning and Trapped in This Modern Age form a closing salvo of generally ambient style sounding fresh.
Lyrically there does seem to be a thread running through things around general mortality and some observation on modern life. Such as from The Beginning: The computers have come alive. We must accept them to survive.” Refers to the emergence of artificial intelligence perhaps. And spoken word from the same track talking about carbon based humans being phased out. Make you think does that.
My only gripe, such as it is, being the two (in my opinion) overlong instrumentals. Arguably they could have been abridged to cut down the running time to a more condensed say 45 minutes.
That said, no denying Dave Brock and his cohorts have a fine album in The Future Never Waits.
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