Hawklords

London Boston Music Room

State-of-the-art ‘Wind-of-change’ Space Rock.

With one foot in a space-rock past and another in a sci-fi future, the Hawklords have never sounded quite so vital, essential and fiercely contemporary as they do at present. The core of

2018’s incarnation originally came together to pay tribute to the late Robert Calvert in ‘08. Now settled in a line-up of guitarist/vocalist Jerry Richards, synth player/vocalist Harvey Bainbridge, bassist/vocalist Tom Ashurst and drummer Dave Pearce, and augmented on this tour by sax-grooving Hawkwind co-founder Nik Turner (78 if he’s a day and showing no signs of returning to Earth), their new seventh album, Brave New World, ranks with the year’s best.

Tonight’s set, still peppered with occasional Calverts (The Aerospaceage Inferno, Ejection), relies mostly on material from BNW (not least a phenomenal Devil In My Head) and 2017’s Six (Nightside), returning to the ‘Wind mothership only for Uncle Sam’s On Mars and a Turner-fronted Master Of The Universe encore. While these ‘Lords are clearly informed by classic ‘Wind (spoken-word interludes, riff-driven mantra hooks, futuristic instro-ambience, vocals that often employ the characteristic upward-tilted Calvert inflection so cannily employed since by John Lydon), deft nu-prog devices, boundless invention and excellent songs mark them out as true progressives more than worthy of your attention.