Nik Turner, best known of course for his various stints in Hawkwind, sadly died towards the end of 2022.
That roughly coincided with this deluxe version re-issue of this Space Ritual 1994 live captured from the performance at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco on 15 February 1994.
It’s a nice triple disc package. Two CD’s of the live set accompanied by a DVD which features ten songs form the live set and a 45-minute tour diary of Nik and his band on the road.
The main band backing Nik is from another band – Pressurehed – and also a couple of ex-Hawkwind members you may remember in Del Dettmar and Alan Powell.
Nik and the band blast through a fine set list which draws not only from Hawkwind classics but also a couple from the late, great Robert Calvert’s Captain Lockheed and the Starfighters album which Nik played on as well as Nik solo stuff such as his superb Xitintoday which was based around his flute playing in the Great Pyramid in Egypt and the Egyptian Book of the Dead.
We have Hawkwind classics such as D-Rider, Sonic Attack, Brainstorm, Master of the Universe, Orgone Accumulator and Silver Machine. Add to that Ejection and the Right Stuff from the Captain Lockheed album and some from Xitintoday plus others making up the extensive twenty one track set list.
The performance is fresh, tight, energetic, powerful and suitably spacey with the delivery of the songs not too far removed from the originals though do have some embellishment and variation to give Nik’s interpretation of them.
Have a listen to Ejection:
This re-issue is an excellent way to remember the uniqueness that was Nik Turner and the wide variety he brought to his long career in the business.
His Xitintoday album form the late 1970s after a departure from Hawkwind remains one of my most played albums to this day. As does Captain Lockheed and the Starfighters.
They don’t make ‘em like Nik any more. Pick up Space Ritual 1994 to listen to and watch what the man was all about. Spacey, trippy, progressive rock as good as it gets given Nik’s pedigree.
>> NIK TURNER SPACE RITUAL 1994 ON AMAZON <<