Astounding Sounds, Amazing Music

About Astounding Sounds, Amazing Music

Astounding Sounds, Amazing Music is the sixth studio album by the British rock band Hawkwind, released in 1976. It reached No. 33 on the UK album charts. The title makes references to old science fiction magazines (Astounding and Amazing Stories), the concept being that each piece of music (and its title) would be interpreted as an individual science fiction story. The record cover is a parody of the cover of these magazines, while the inner sleeve carried small ads, with each band member having their own product (e. g. Dr Brock's cure for piles, Paul Rudolph's Manly Strapon, and Simon King's Pleasure Primer). The cover was double sided, one side illustrated by Calvert's childhood friend Tony Hyde, the other by Barney Bubbles signed as Grove Lane, with initial print-runs having either as the front cover. Bubbles original design was to have been Steppenwolf looming over the city. This album marked the start of a new era for Hawkwind, having left the management of Douglas Smith for Tony Howard and changed record companies from United Artists Records to Charisma Records. Musically, the dirty heavy metal lead bass guitar playing of Lemmy was replaced by the cleaner, formally trained bass playing of Paul Rudolph. All members of the band were now contributing to the writing and arrangement of the music leading to more width in style, and the recording and production is better defined than previous albums. The greatest change is in the return of Robert Calvert, this time as a permanent vocalist rather than the peripheral poet role he occupied on Space Ritual. Not only did he bring crafted lyrics to the band, but he was intent on turning live shows into a piece of music theatre with specific characters for him to act out, Calvert explaining in a 1976 interview that "We're writing numbers now with visual ideas in mind, rather than trying to think of things to impose on numbers we've already got. We're trying to get the visual side of the band focussed on individuals rather than on screen projections. Nik, Dave and myself are, in some parts of the show, playing the parts of actors... All in all, it works up to quite a nice piece of theatre, spontaneous theatre that is. more »