There are several versions of
Harvey Bainbridge around.
There’s the guy who Ginger
Baker, upon being fired from
the 1979/80 Hawkwind, unfairly described as the
“world’s worst bass player”; the
improvisational stream-ofconsciousness
poet from the
live Hawk experience; and the
chap who turns up here with
his elongated synthesiser
compositions. All the same fellow
but, like a Time Lord, our Mr
Bainbridge wears many faces.
At least from its title, this is
the album that Bainbridge has
been talking about releasing for
a few years – and it’s
appropriately turned up at the
home of the Hawkwind reissue
project at the same time as
Church Of Hawkwind, itself
essentially an electronic album
concocted between Bainbridge
and Dave Brock during studio
downtime for Sonic Attack. But
where Church Of… was a more
varied collection of tracks, here
we have four drawn-out
sequences split down the
middle by a short piece familiar
from Bainbridge’s Hawk days,
The Scanning.
Leaning towards the
Tangerine Dream end of
electronica, this is really all
about Bainbridge building
himself some repeating
patterns and sequences over
which to layer effects and
washes. By turns spacey and
chilled-out, these are hardly
adventurous journeys, but are
effective and absorbing
enough.
