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Hawkwind’s Chronicle of the Black Sword
2nd July 2009
fantasy • music

Ah, Hawkwind. Rocksters of Reality! Spacefarers of the Science-Fictional! Plunderers of Pulp! Barbarians of Blanga!

That’s enough of that. Let’s just say I like them, and The Chronicle of the Black Sword is one of my favourite of their many albums.

Those many albums… Sometimes I think Hawkwind aren’t so much a band as an anthology series, or an old pulp magazine. Weird Tales, say, or New Worlds. Pick up any lurid-covered issue of Weird Tales in its heyday, and you’d find a mix of stories by individually excellent authors, presided over and brought into some sort of unity by the vision of the editor, shaky-handed Farnsworth Wright (the “Tyrant Pharnabeezer”, to some of those who had to deal with his rejections), or, for New Worlds, (and quite fittingly in this case) the staunchly bearded Michael Moorcock. Pick up any lurid-covered Hawkwind album and you’ll find the same mix of authorial styles, presided over this time by chief Hawk Dave Brock (who has been called a lot worse than “the Tyrant Pharnabeezer” by those ex-members who’ve departed over creative differences, or been plain fired, but I think without him we wouldn’t have nearly so much — or as good — Hawkwind as we do. Hell, we wouldn’t have Hawkwind. Besides, I love his singing voice and thudding guitar).

Pick any two Hawkwind albums and play them back to back, and at times you’d be hard pressed to guess they were from the same band. You’ve got sixties druggy droning on their debut, a punk-like tightness in the Calvert/Charisma years, electronic trancy weirdness on It Is The Business of the Future To Be Dangerous, and oodles of straight-ahead rock (1980’s Levitation being a particular high point, for me).

chronicle-of-the-black-swor

Hawkwind's Chronicle of the Black Sword, cover by John Coulthart

The Chronicle of the Black Sword is mostly straight-ahead rock, with a few patches of moody instrumental, and the beautiful breathy synth lament “Zarozinia”. Having listened to the album a good few times since I bought it back in something like 1987 (it was released in 1984), I find it impossible to judge how well it works, as a fantasy concept album, in transporting you to its particular story world. Why? Because all I have to do is hear the deep whomping thrum of the electronic drone that opens “Song of the Swords”, the album’s first track, and I’m there, in Hawkwind/Moorcock/Elric land, and I stay there till “Horn of Destiny” at the end. (With perhaps a slight jar at “Needle Gun” which opens side two, because it’s Jerry Cornelius, not Elric.)

But Chronicle is just a taster of the full Hawkwind/Moorcock/Elric experience, to be found on Live Chronicles, a double album and DVD of the accompanying live show. (Which, I always kick myself to recall, I had the chance of seeing when Hawkwind put on a reprise of the show at Conspiracy ‘87, but, at the time, I was too scared of the idea of going to a rock concert to do it!) Here we get songs from Chronicle of the Black Sword and Hawkwind’s back catalogue, as well as some new linking tracks, woven into the tale of doomed Elric Womanslayer and the final battle between Law and Chaos.

Cover to US release of Chronicle of the Black Sword

Cover to US release of Chronicle of the Black Sword

How I’d love a full studio treatment of the whole show! Because, like it though I do, Live Chronicles just doesn’t have the full thumping aural richness of its studio-based little brother, and in the case of a song like “Moonglum” (written, sung and lead-guitared by the wonderfully reggae-voiced Huw Lloyd Langton), this is a crime, because this sublime piece of tune-smithery hasn’t, as far as I know, ever been studio recorded.

Ah well. Perhaps I should put the full-studio Chronicles (a triple album, I’d like to think) down as my fantasy fantasy album, the one I’d most like to hear had it ever been recorded.

Or I could, if I hadn’t already reserved that slot for the last of my top five fantasy concept albums, which I’ll be covering in the next Mewsings…

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Uriah Heep’s The Magician’s Birthday
28th June 2009
fantasy • music
Alright, so “The Magician’s Birthday” is only half an LP-side’s worth of fantasy concept album, but if you put all the fantasy-tinged songs on The Magician’s Birthday album together with the ones on the other Uriah Heep release of that year (Demons and Wizards), and use a bit of imaginative glue, you can stick together a good solid fantasy concept album right there. Not to mention the fact that you’ll end up with not one but two Roger Dean covers!
(I did say I’d be cheating a bit).
“The Magician’s Birthday”, based on a story by keyboardist/songwriter Ken Hensley, is a 10-minute prog opera about the weird and wonderful birthday party of a good magician, which is interrupted when an evil sorcerer arrives, demanding a duel. It’s got whimsy (an extended kazoo solo), grandeur (those transplendent harmony vocals on the outro), and good old fashioned hard rock (with an extended drum & guitar “fight sequence”). Compared to the otherworldiness of Jon Anderson’s Olias, and the epic fantasy of Mandalaband’s Wendor, this is more like a sumptuously-illustrated fairy tale, something by Lord Dunsany or a particularly optimistic Clark Ashton Smith, perhaps.
And it’s optimism that is the overriding note. There’s genuine hopefulness in Uriah Heep’s fantasy, as exemplified by “The Wizard” (from Demons and Wizards), a storyteller’s anthem (pipping Yes’s “Wonderful Stories” to the winning post, in my opinion), that manages to be both nostalgic for the never-never, and upliftingly positive. The moody “Tales” (from The Magician’s Birthday), is another song about storytelling, but with a darker tint, being told from the point of view of a group of immortals to whom man’s struggles are “just another tale”.
And Heep often use fantasy to address dark moods, but almost always with the sun shining through at the end (quite literally, in “Sunrise”). The good-versus-evil magical battle comes up again on Demons and Wizards’ “The Spell”, while the fantasy-tinged “Circle of Hands” (from the same album) is about watchfulness for an enemy who once sought to murder the dawn itself. (There’s that rising sun again.)
Heep manage to tell their stories in tightly-structured rock songs, always melodic (Hensley’s slide guitar often provides a beautiful addition to many of the songs), and lush (layered organ and harmony vocals), not to mention peppered with a liberal sense of fun (add to that kazoo solo the whistling kettle on “The Wizard”), which keeps the prog-wolves of dullness and overindulgence well at bay. The lyrics, often the most embarrassing part of any fantasy album, are also not only poetic but meaningful in a wider sense than the story they’re telling, which may be why Heep had so much commercial success while peddling fantasy tunes like these.

Alright, so “The Magician’s Birthday” is only half an LP-side of fantasy concept album, but if you put all the fantasy-tinged songs on The Magician’s Birthday (1972) album together with those on the other Uriah Heep release of the same year (Demons and Wizards), and use a bit of imaginative glue, you can stick together a good solid fantasy concept album right there. Not to mention the fact that you’ll end up with not one but two Roger Dean covers!

(I did say I’d be cheating a bit).

magicians_birthday

“The Magician’s Birthday”, based on a story by keyboardist/songwriter Ken Hensley, is a 10-minute prog opera about the weird and wonderful birthday party of a good magician, interrupted when an evil sorcerer arrives, demanding a duel. It’s got whimsy (an extended kazoo solo), grandeur (those transplendent harmony vocals on the outro), and good old fashioned hard rock (with an extended drum & guitar “fight sequence” in the middle). Compared to the otherworldiness of Jon Anderson’s Olias, and the epic fantasy of Mandalaband’s Wendor, this is more like a sumptuously-illustrated fairy tale, something by Lord Dunsany or a particularly optimistic Clark Ashton Smith, perhaps.

And it’s optimism that’s the overriding note. There’s genuine hopefulness in Uriah Heep’s fantasy, as exemplified by “The Wizard” (from Demons and Wizards), a storyteller’s anthem (pipping Yes’s “Wonderful Stories” to the winning post, in my opinion), that manages to be both nostalgic for the never-never, and upliftingly positive. The moody “Tales” (from The Magician’s Birthday), is another song about storytelling, but with a darker tint, being told from the point of view of a group of immortals to whom man’s struggles are “just another tale”.

demons_and_wizards

And Heep often use fantasy to address dark moods, but almost always with the sun shining through at the end (quite literally, in “Sunrise”). The good-versus-evil magical battle comes up again on Demons and Wizards’ “The Spell”, while the fantasy-tinged “Circle of Hands” (from the same album) is about watchfulness for an enemy who once sought to murder the dawn itself.

Heep manage to tell their stories in tightly-structured rock songs, always melodic (Hensley’s slide guitar often provides a beautiful addition to many of the songs), and lush (layered organ and harmony vocals), not to mention peppered with a liberal sense of fun (add to that kazoo solo the whistling kettle on “The Wizard”), which keeps the prog-wolves of dullness and overindulgence well at bay. The lyrics, often the most embarrassing part of any fantasy album, are also not only poetic but meaningful in a wider sense than the story they’re telling, which may be why Heep had so much commercial success while peddling fantasy tunes like these.

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Mandalaband’s The Eye of Wendor
24th June 2009
fantasy • music

Above the city of Thôl Ænord rises the colossal statue of the king. Set in his crown is the magical red gem known as the Eye of Wendor. One day, creatures riding a dark, winged beast alight on the statue and steal the gem, and from that point the life goes out of the land. But the seer, Almar, has had a dream, prophesying a hero who will set things right, a man who will have been born at the very moment the Eye of Wendor was stolen, and who will be known by birthmarks under both of his arms.

eyeofwendor

Thus begins the (rather long) story in the booklet accompanying Mandalaband’s 1978 album, The Eye of Wendor: Prophecies. And it ends, “To be continued.” For, The Eye of Wendor: Prophecies was intended to be the first in a trilogy of fantasy-themed concept albums. The sequels were never recorded, but this first instalment has been reissued on CD twice since its initial appearance as an LP, and serves as a tantalising glimpse of what the full trilogy might have sounded like.

Mandalaband wasn’t a traditional gigging band, but an array of session musicians and a few names (Justin Hayward, Maddy Prior, Noel Redding, Paul Young, Kevin Godley, Barclay James Harvest) brought together by the writer/producer/engineer (now Egyptologist) David Rohl, recording it at Strawberry Studios between 1976 and 1978, for a mere £8,000. All this — a rock musical featuring guest vocalists — brings to mind Jeff Wayne’s excellent War of the Worlds, which was released the month after The Eye of Wendor came out on Chrysalis in May 1978.

wendor map

To say The Eye of Wendor is Tolkienesque is like saying butter is buttery. The names are Tolkienesque: the lands Andor and Wendor sound like Gondor, the Elf King Nimrond sounds like Elrond, and the sacred horn of the Galadrim recalls, well, Tolkien’s Galadhrim. The world is Tolkienesque, with humans living alongside Grey Elves and Dwarves. Some of the music was actually composed as part of a proposed soundtrack to The Lord of the Rings. But it escapes the “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter”-ness of, say, Terry Brooks’ Sword of Shannara, by on the one hand having at least a few of its own ideas, and on the other, by being music rather than fiction, which makes the similarities/influences less obvious.

Rather than the exotic, electronic and World sounds of Jon Anderson’s Olias of Sunhillow (reviewed in a previous Mewsings), Wendor goes for a more traditional sound, wedding rock guitars and pianos to orchestral strings and brass (apart from in the quirky mood-piece of the “Almar’s Tower” track). The result is a big, lush, rock-friendly wash of sound, which is more about adventure and emotion than the strangeness or wonder of fantasy, although there is a sense of melancholy nostalgia which is often the nature of Tolkienesque epics. And perhaps it’s doubly fitting, because the story is itself about a magical thing (the Eye of Wendor) that has been lost, and most of this album’s instalment of the story is backstory, retelling the tale of the days before the city of Thôl Ænord was built, which adds yet another layer of long-ago lostness to the already nostalgic air.

As musical storytelling, it’s quite effective, but I can’t help thinking it wouldn’t be able to be done today, not without a big fat tongue in the cheek — which is a shame, because how can you sing with a tongue in your cheek?

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Jon Anderson’s Olias of Sunhillow
21st June 2009
fantasy • music
This month, Atomhenge release a newly remastered and expanded version of Hawkwind’s Elric-inspired progstravaganza, The Chronicle of the Black Sword, (which was, alongside Hawkwind’s Astounding Songs, Amazing Music, the first LP I ever bought), so I thought I’d celebrate by listing my top 10 fantasy-themed concept albums. Then I realised I couldn’t think of 10 fantasy-themed concept albums, let alone list only good ones, so here, over the next few mewsings, (and with a little bit of cheating) are my top 5-or-so, starting with Jon Anderson’s 1976 album, Olias of Sunhillow.
When the various members of Yes decided to take a break from the band and produce solo albums, Jon Anderson holed himself up in a studio with nothing but an engineer and four groups of instruments: drums (of various ethnicities), stringed instruments (including kotos, sitars, harps and guitars), a collection of “international bells”, and a stack of electronic keyboards. These four groups represented the Nagrunium, Asatranius, Oractaniom, and Nordranious — the four tribes of Sunhillow, a crumbling world on the verge of destruction. Three heroes unite to save Sunhillow. Olias builds a music-powered flying ship Moorglade Mover, with which the trio are to find their people a new home. (The other two heroes have slightly more ill-defined roles. Qoquaq is “a leader, fashioner of peoples”, which is vague but at least important-sounding. Ranyart, however, is “to guide the moments begotten light”. I wonder what he actually put on his c.v.?)
But the key instrument, binding together those four disparate groups, is Anderson’s ethereal voice, often layered many times, singing wordlessly or intoning the peculiar poetry of his lyrics.
The initial spark of inspiration was Roger Dean’s cover to Yes’s 1972 album Fragile (depicting a flying ship leaving a crumbling world), but to this Anderson added an enthusiasm for Tolkien, and the writings of proto-New Age prophet Vera Stanley Alder. In fact, there’s a dangerously strong tint of the New Age about Anderson’s first solo album, both in the optimistic whimsy of its fantasy, and the musical palette of soft, sparkling synths and “World” instruments. Thankfully, it easily escapes that particular doldrum of musical Hell through sheer energy. This isn’t music to attune your chakras to, it’s adventurous music, full of drama, uplifting melodies, evocative soundscapes, and a fresh unearthliness that makes it the only fantasy album I can think of which genuinely sounds like it could have come from another culture.

This month, Atomhenge release a newly remastered and expanded version of Hawkwind’s Elric-inspired progstravaganza, The Chronicle of the Black Sword, (which was, alongside Hawkwind’s Astounding Songs, Amazing Music, the first LP I ever bought), so I thought I’d celebrate by listing my top 10 fantasy-themed concept albums. Then I realised I couldn’t think of 10 fantasy-themed concept albums, let alone good ones, so here, over the next few Mewsings, (and with a little bit of cheating here and there) are my top 5-or-so, starting with Jon Anderson’s 1976 album, Olias of Sunhillow.

oliasofsunhillow

When the various members of Yes decided to take a break from the band and produce solo albums in 1975, Anderson holed himself up in a studio with nothing but an engineer and four groups of instruments: drums of various ethnicities, stringed instruments (including kotos, sitars, harps and guitars), a collection of “international bells”, and a stack of electronic keyboards. These groups represented the Nagrunium, Asatranius, Oractaniom, and Nordranious — the four tribes of Sunhillow, a crumbling world on the verge of destruction. Three heroes unite to save Sunhillow. Olias builds a music-powered flying ship, Moorglade Mover, with which the trio are to find their people a new home. (The other two heroes have slightly more ill-defined roles. Qoquaq is “a leader, fashioner of peoples”, which is vague but at least important-sounding. Ranyart, however, is “to guide the moments begotten light”. I wonder what he actually put on his c.v.?) But the key instrument, and perhaps the most weirdly fantastic, is Anderson’s ethereal voice, often multi-layered, singing wordlessly or intoning the peculiar poetry of his lyrics, which when read are pretty much nonsense, but suddenly make sense when sung.

The initial spark of inspiration was Roger Dean’s cover to Yes’s 1971 album Fragile (depicting a flying ship leaving a crumbling world). To this Anderson added an enthusiasm for Tolkien, and the writings of proto-New Age prophet Vera Stanley Alder. In fact, there’s a dangerous swerve towards the New Age in Anderson’s first solo album, both in the optimistic whimsy of its fantasy world, and the musical palette of soft, sparkling synths and World instruments. Thankfully, it easily escapes that particular doldrum of musical Hell through sheer energy (on the musical front) and sheer weirdness (on the fantasy front). This isn’t music to attune your chakras to, it’s adventurous, full of drama, uplifting melodies, evocative soundscapes, and a fresh unearthliness that makes it the only fantasy album I can think of which genuinely sounds like it could have come from another world.

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