Steve Hillage
Live Herald

Years ago, in the pages of the authoritative magazine Rockstar, someone noted that one day the history of Rock could be written simply by analyzing live albums, as a defining phenomenon of an era. I don't know if this statement still holds true today, but some double live albums from the '70s still represent a fairly faithful mirror of what artists expressed, not only at the compositional level but also - and above all - for their performance skills.

The work I want to present to readers is a double live album from the era by an artist perhaps not well-known, but of great charm. He is Steve Hillage, English. He began his career with a group affiliated with the Canterbury scene named Uriel, which left no recorded trace (though it seems something has now emerged from the drawers). The Uriel soon disbanded, giving rise to Egg and Khan. Hillage was personally involved in this latter formation, which recorded in 1970 that great masterpiece "Space Shanty," an album balancing between psychedelic, avant-garde, Canterbury, and Space Rock. From a parallel project of his, another album emerged in the same period with Arzachel. It wasn't an act of schizophrenia, although his instability and his constant changing of schemes and mental positions led him to join the craziest band of the time: Daevid Allen's Gong.

A few years and the adventure dissipates like water on the surface of the Libyan desert: he begins his solo career. "Fish Rising," "L," "Motivation Radio," and then a mega tour with a splendid band that featured, among others, former Jethro Tull drummer, Clive Bunker, and the future Camel bassist, Colin Bass (did you know this bassist is Bo Derek's brother?!).

Apart from digressions, from the summary of this tour emerged a double LP with three live sides and one studio side with unreleased tracks. On the CD prepared by Virgin in 1990, the studio part was cut to release a single volume, a rather questionable choice.

The live portion, of course, covers the guitarist's solo production, and the arrangements remain quite faithful to those of the studio albums, considering that this is music with many connections to space rock that also includes temporal extensions of the tracks to which solos and instrumental connecting spaces are added between tracks, which often transform into suites. The concert starts explosively: an energetic unison of a few seconds and then Hillage's Gibson kicks in with sounds all personalized by the ARP-Avatar, the first guitar synth produced in the world, of which he was the first experimenter along with Rutherford of Genesis. The band is cohesive and perfectly integrates into the magical guitar riffs, between high and full-bodied Rock-Fusion and rarefied Space moments.

Steve Hillage's voice is warm and powerful, a bluesman lent to prog. The touch on the strings is clean and precise, and there are no performance blemishes, everything flows smoothly as it should. Among the most successful tracks are surely the opener "Salmon Song," the hypnotic 9/8 of "Searching For The Spark," the monumental "Lunar Musick Suite" joined with "Meditation Of The Dragon." The music passes quickly, pleasantly, engagingly, without pause, and the regret of "too bad I wasn't there" is great.

A few words for the studio side. Four tracks of electro-instrumental experimentation with synthesizers of the new (then) generation. "Talking To The Sun," the first unreleased track, is a rather consistent Space with the production of previous records. The second, "1988 Aktivator" is a fast and almost violent Rock'n'Roll played between a punishing rhythm and very modern sounds. Very interesting "New Age Synthesis (Unzipping The Zype)" an electronic ride akin to cosmic Germans. The studio side closes with "Healing Feeling," a splendid crescendo of synth with a final guitar solo in the classic Hillage style.

Forgive me if I have gone on too long, I hope not at the expense of readability.