Hawkwind

Space Ritual, EMI ****

From the hippie squats of London's Ladbroke Grove to the outer reaches of your mind, these 1970s spacerockers pioneered the welding of sci-fi themes with proto-punk. This collector's edition of Hawkwind's fourth album (recorded live in Liverpool and London in 1972) is ambitious in the extreme, representing as it does a storyline (influenced in part by sci-fi writer Michael Moorcock and psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich) about space travellers suspended in time. It's actually terrific stuff; Hawkwind lay down a granite-tough and marble-smooth sonic assault that embraces stone-cold stoner classics (Brainstorm, Master of the Universe, Orgone Accumulator). Factor in thespian-style spoken word inserts from Robert Calvert, and you have a wholly influential yet curiously little heard out-there stoner/space rock classic. hawkwind.com

Download: Brainstorm, Sonic Attack, Master of the Universe