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IF IT’S OUT THERE, IT’S IN HERE
With new album Stories From Time And Space set for release in April, the mighty Hawkwind are already looking ahead to their next by working with producer William Orbit.
Space rockers Hawkwind have announced a run of tour dates for spring 2024, and revealed that the title of their next studio album will be Stories From Time And Space. It’ll be released via Cherry Red in April.
“We haven’t actually done anything about space for ages,” guitarist Magnus Martin tells Prog of the album’s origins.“So we thought, ‘Let’s actually do some space rock.’ There’s also this amazing book that [author and former music impresario] Rob Godwin has written about space rock and Hawkwind as well, so that’s what got us thinking about actually just doing a space rock album, you know?”
The gestation of Stories From Time And Space goes back almost a year, when Hawkwind founder and leader Dave Brock told Prog that work was already underway on it just as 2023’s The Future Never Waits was about to be released.
“Yeah, we constantly write stuff as we go along,” says Brock.“We turf out tracks that we don’t think are very good. And then put new ones in that are better. I mean, this is the essence of being an artist.”
“It’s a totally different album from what we started,” adds Martin.“It’s like you do the bulk of it and then doing the last 10 to 20 per cent is the really difficult bit. And then deciding which tracks to ditch and which ones to keep. There’s loads of great stuff in the bin!”
Despite the band’s ongoing creative endeavours, the pair also reveal that their much-vaunted collaboration with superproducer and dance remixer William Orbit – whose credits include Madonna, Blur and Beth Orton – hasn’t taken off quite as anticipated.
Having rehearsed with Hawkwind in Dave Brock’s Devon studio and appeared with them at the Royal Albert Hall as part of their Evening Of Sonic Destruction in September 2023, his participation on Stories From Time And Space was curtailed when the album’s deadlines proved too tight as well as him being committed to another project.
“He went off with some famous singer to do another album – an American woman. I can’t say any more than that,”says Brock with a conspiratorial nod.
According to the long-time bandleader, the in
