Dave Brock - Presents...This Was Your Future

Dave Brock

Presents…This Was Your Future

(Cherry Red)

8/10

By Paul Davies

Compiled by the wizard of space-rock music, Dave Brock proves he's more Grandmaster Hash than Flash on this idiosyncratic collection of experimental head music by groups who have now mostly gone up in smoke. Shining a guiding light through the hazy mist of time, Brock unearths a multitude of bands who progressed through the free festival movement of the 70s and onwards. With Ozric Tentacles featured, there's the wonderfully named Poisoned Elektrick Head, Outskirts Of Infinity, Ethereal Counterbalance, Omnia Opera and The Magic Mushroom Band giving a vivid idea of the sort of groups who once contributed to the wobbly sonic architecture of this alternative culture's spacey landscape. Brock himself also turns up in different guises on the mothership’s opener PXR5, under his own name as a solo artist and with his Agents Of Chaos nomenclature. However, it's the bands and artists with associations to Hawkwind, collected here, that provide a heady experience as The Lloyd Langton Group, Michael Moorcock's Deep Fix, Robert Calvert, Hawklords and Tim Blake spread their psyched-up wings where guitar and synth rituals meld together to explore a turned-on mankind's inner space. However, and in equal measure, it's this Brock inspired scene of lesser known and defunct groups who finally have their moment to shine. Like a dead star's light finally reaching mass consciousness, Brock boldly goes in search of diamonds created from the space dust of a past time.