Hawkwind – Doremi Fasol Latido (Atomhenge)
LP | 2CD | 3CD + 2Blu Ray
Out 8th November 2024
Buy it from Sister Ray
Hawkwind’s third album gets the deluxe reissue treatment and Nathan Brown continues charting their early years, hearing a mix of heavy metal and space opera.
If Hawkwind’s second album X In Search of Space had signaled the band’s direction was spaceward then 1972’s Doremi Fasol Latido was the full space flight. Having had a hit with Silver Machine, Hawkwind were in ebullient form. Doremi, as it is affectionately known, shows Hawkwind helping to forge heavy metal as much as early Sabbath did. It’s there in the bludgeoning rhythms and guitar tone, especially on the electrifying opening of Brainstorm.
The album’s varied sounds could even be framed like a space journey movie, something like this: Brainstorm the ascending sound of the space craft taking off and reaching critical velocity; Space is Deep is the calm and wonderment at the enormity of the cosmos as they float in orbit, One Change continuing this feeling; Lord of Light is the sound of stellar propulsion, engines fired up again and propelling our crew further through the galaxies; Down Through The Night is yet more calm as they drift downwards onto a new planet; Time We Left This World Today the disjointed chaotic alien world they find; The Watcher the sinister closing scene as all powerful extra-terrestrials look down on the hapless craft. You could call it a “space opera” or stellar odyssey – which is broadly how the live LP Space Ritual was packaged, largely based around the songs from this LP.
Brainstorm would become a mainstay of Hawkwind’s live set and to this day is still one of their career high points along with Lord Of Light, both channeling power and building up into the throb of a space craft at full throttle. They also featured extended jam sessions which herald the extended bass solos and chords that would feature on Space Ritual and subsequent records. This provides as much of the characteristic Hawkwind sound as the wah-wah guitar, sax, sonic generators plus Brock’s and Turner’s voices. Space Is Deep and Time We Left… both make excellent star gazing music. Acoustic number The Watcher, voiced by Lemmy, would reappear in full electrified form on Motorhead’s debut LP.
This 2024 Atomhenge deluxe reissue is available in a clutch of variants
Vinyl LP and 7″
The new vinyl version was remastered at Abbey Road Studios from the original master tapes. The sleeve, inner bag and poster are reproduced as per the original. It is accompanied by a remastered reissue of a rare German 1972 single release of Lord of Light b/w a live cut of Born to Go, both truncated to fit on a 7 inch.
Double CD
The double CD variant presents the remastered original mix as per the vinyl version on CD 1, with additional remastered single tracks Born To Go (live) and Lord Of Light from the German 7 inch along with the ill fated Urban Guerrilla single and its B-side Brainbox Pollution. Released in 1973, Urban Guerrilla, inspired by the Angry Brigade, coincided with an IRA bombing campaign in London. Despite reaching the Top 40, the BBC refused to play it and the band withdrew it for fear of accusations of opportunism. The B-side Brainbox Pollution has the unfortunate coincidence of the bass line having a similarity to the theme of Only Fools and Horses but is still a great song.
CD2, like all the recent deluxe reissues, provides a Stephen W Tayler remix with an emphasis of expanding the feeling of space. He also has a play with Urban Guerilla, two cuts of Brainbox Pollution, a studio version of Seven By Seven that differs from the Silver Machine B-side and Take What You Can which is a lesser known fairly basic tune rescued by the middle jam section
Sleeve notes in the booklet are provided by Robert Godwin, accompanied by album artwork, posters, photos and other ephemera.
Blu Ray box set
The absolute deluxe Blu Ray limited edition box set features everything from the double CD version supplemented by a third CD with a new mix of the infamous Greasy Truckers Party recording from The Roundhouse in 1972. Highlights include whooping and whooshing versions of Master Of The Universe and Born To Go. Also featured is the version of Silver Machine used for the single with Bob Calvert’s original vocal in situ rather than the more familiar (and superior) Lemmy overdub. It ends with Brainstorm Jam, which as the name suggests is a freeform take on Doremi’s opener starting off very Stoogey and skipping the start to settle into the main body of the song.
2 Blu Ray discs provide 5.1. surround sound mixes of the CDs 2 and 3 along with the 1973 promotional film for Urban Guerilla.
The box set is completed with a 68-page illustrated book with new essay and a reproduction poster initially included with the first pressing of album in November 1972 with Atomhenge asserting that this boxed set is “the definitive release of this legendary album”.
Arguably, Doremi Fasol Latido sits at the beginning of a period between the Silver Machine single and Warrior On The Edge Of Time in 1975 when Hawkwind were at their best, creating a myth that lives on and is still gigging to this day.
Available from Atomhenge and from Sister Ray.
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All words by Nathan Brown. You can read more from Nathan on his Louder Than War archive over here.
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