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Album Details

• Artist: Hawkwind
• Album: Doremi Fasol Latido
• Label: United Artists
• Year of Release: 1972
• ME Rating: Indie Classic
• Reviewed by: gwhill on 2012-12-12

While I like every Hawkwind album a lot, and often for different reasons, of the early discs, this one might be my favorite. Don’t get me wrong; I love In Search of Space and the self-titled debut. Mind you, I also put Hall of the Mountain Grill in a totally different category. I’d have to say, though, if you told me I could only keep one of the other two I mentioned and this disc – I’d probably still have this one. From the opening “Brainstorm” to the brilliant “Lord of Light,” and onward through “Time We Left This World” and “The Watcher,” there is no track here that doesn’t work. This one is not the masterpiece that Hall of the Mountain Grill is, but it’s not far from it. If you want to sample the early works of this band, there is probably no better starting point.

Fans of Motorhead, turning to Hawkwind through that connection will find familiar territory in the closing track, “The Watcher.” Not only did Lemmy pen the cut, and sang it, but it is one that he also revisited with Motorhead. Tracks like the pounding, yet almost hypnotic, “Brainstorm” (at over eleven minutes in length quite a jam) have become Hawkwind classics. “Time We Left This World Today” is one of my all time favorite Hawkwind tunes. It combines the harder rocking sound with the chanting elements of the first album into something that's just classic.

In so many ways, this album really represents the “Hawkwind sound” better than any disc in the catalog. The harder rocking hypnotic element that was emerging with the In Search of Space is fully realized here, yet it’s also connected closely enough to the sound the band created on their debut to make it fit there, too. All in all, this might be the best first introduction to Hawkwind of anything they’ve created. It’s clearly an essential Hawkwind album.

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