AUDIO: Lord of Light

Doremi Fasol Latido has long served as a testing ground among skeptics for The Jam's legitimacy. Few psych-heads will dispute Hawkwind's importance; after a decline in popularity during the '80s, traces of the band's astral projections began to surface in lauded offerings from Monster Magnet, Skullflower, High Rise, Comets on Fire and even Acid Mothers Temple. Their first four studio recordings have influenced the artists highlighted in Julian Cope's Head Heritage just as much as The Piper at the Gates of Dawn or the first two Soft Machine LPs. However, Hawkwind have an equally pervasive legacy as B-list arena-cramming dinosaurs. Brawny riffs and strains of Zoso's epic argument spangle their work, while metalheads might recall that this is indeed the band in which Lemmy cut his teeth. Their name has been further dragged through the classic rock mire by a series of sci-fi-themed later albums and solo projects, all of which rival Tales from the Topographic Ocean in terms of clunky pretension. Ever wonder why you never see original Hawkwind vinyl in record stores? 'Cause dads own all of it.

The group's duplicitous reputation immediately suggests a correlation between psychedelic noodling and cock-out soloing: both can indicate a caveman impulse to overpower and overwhelm, after all. And it's true, to an extent; Doremi may be Hawkwind's most space-tastic song cycle, but it still rocks with Hendrix's reptile brain. Given the album's debt to a staunchly blues-based hard rock tradition, you could make a case for reading it as a Grateful Dead record with different cosmetics.

But is it really just a few guitar tones away from "San Fran hippie spoo", to steal Thurston Moore's description of jam enthusiast Lee Ranaldo's musical taste? Do Hawkwind digress into excess and try to pass it off as expanse? If we answer "yes", we still have to deal with the fact that there's nothing grand about the grandiloquence that we assume characterizes the band's music.

Take Side A, Track One, "Brainstorm" -- perhaps the group's most influential song. Less than a third of the way into its eleven minute tirade, the song already feels like it's about to drown in its own ridiculousness, with a chugging Hell's Angel of a rhythm section plowing on against its better judgment while the free-form guitar swirl already seems to be on the verge of exhausting its space-age tonal arsenal. The song rockets forward anyway, indulging itself with minute shifts in phaser texture, then doubling back to increase the storm's intensity. Instead of spending the extended instrumental interludes searching for resolution through conventional guitar solos or chord changes, Hawkwind dot the song with impressionistic splotches of trippy, studio-altered sound, and suddenly the emphasis shifts toward perspective and consciousness -- the singer's, altered states thereof, your own. There's no unity, no mean -- sure, the drummer and bassist aren't going to change course, but they're leading a futile march into an empty future. "Brainstorm" knows no grand design; it's a nihilistic stomp into a cosmos where stars burn and burst with no deity dictating the length of their days. It's the diametrical opposite of Dark Side of the Moon's escape to a brilliant, dazzling frontier. And it's a wooly, invigorating motherfucker of a rock song.

If all of this sounds like I'm blowing smoke up your ass and suggesting we all embrace the void, well, that's what Hawkwind can drive a man to do. The wasteland isn't a thing to decry in their world -- it's something to champion! Rather than just lying stoned on the couch and stumbling through bleak, half-baked philosophical spiels between bootlegged episodes of The Sifl and Olly Show, these fellas get their asses into gear and pound out hymn after hymn to the one force they can believe in: sound. And Hawkwind know how to bring the congregation into a state of awe -- just listen to "Space Is Deep"'s rousing climax, in which a pulsating electric guitar leads the charge out of the first section's warbly nebula into fields of white light and heat. It's a triumphant breakout, but in the only way that Hawkwind triumph. A druggy haze is trumped by and even druggier haze; sound is overcome by more sound.

When Hawkwind are in galactic traveler mode, their acid freakouts rally us into identifying with the faithless, the destructive, the perverse. When Hawkwind jam, the only thing we're able to believe in is the absurdity of plunging headlong into such a pit; virtuosity and good form don't factor into our appreciation. In this way, their galactic romps distance themselves from the Garcia/Anastasio tradition, in which clean, Platonic aesthetics provide the impetus for enjoyment, even in the midst of a stinking, cannabis-filled mud pit.

Hawkwind aren't always charging blindly into the abyss, though; when they offer a (relatively) cogent, soulful series of vocal and instrumental passages in "Time We Left This World Today", they complicate matters quite a bit by finding a more linear, progressive approach that might suit them even better than their wide-open psych-fests. The song smashes genre and style the way most artists only dream of doing, swinging with Sly Stone bass thump, protest march call and response vocals, soul-jazz sax and menacing hard rock crunch. Its probing, liberated funk would sit well with Fela Kuti, Sun Ra or Can on a mixtape, and unlike the other songs on the record, it constantly alternates between vocal and instrumental segments, varying itself slightly but noticeably with each movement. Here, Hawkwind achieve a stylistic and cultural unity that more sincerely echoes "Space Is Deep"'s worship of sound. Whereas other songs' reverence feels like a trembling reaction to an uncontrollable natural force, "It's Time We Left This World Today"'s awe ripens into jubilation, envisioning sound as a means by which we can reconcile ourselves with one another through cultural exchange. It's important to note that the song eschews the jam tradition's reliance on archetypes and token instrumentation; its stylistic fusion is more subtle and effective.

By examining The Jam's function in Doremi Fasol Latido, we see that psychotropic guitar wailing doesn't always portend sticking your head up your ass. Hawkwind use it to force us to confront utter darkness, and then to propose a way out, or at least a placating distraction. You'll notice I didn't mention any song lyrics -- that's because the album insists on communicating through sound and sound alone. Whether you're satisfied with the questions and answers that the sound poses depends largely upon personal predilections, namely just how much of an Existentialist you are. More important is the simple fact that Hawkwind engage in such a pointed, explosive discourse. They may not be the most credible experimentalists of their day, but they'll always be dangerous.

-- Phillip Buchan