HAWKWIND:
Weird Tapes 1: Sonic Assassins, Dave Brock: CD
This initial entry in the “Weird Tapes” series is basically a split release, combining half an album’s worth of the Sonic Assassins live on Christmas Eve 1977 with a bit less than half an album’s worth of Dave Brock solo tracks, plus one extant Hawkwind live version of “Who’s Gonna Win the War,” perhaps to justify the Hawkwind logo on the front, since the bulk of the album isn’t technically Hawkwind.  Still, the Sonic Assassins (described in Pete Frame’s Rock Family Trees as Brock’s local/second-string group of the time) here also feature full-fledged Hawkwind member Bob Calvert alongside the Assassins, two of whom would end up in the Hawklords in a short while anyway.  It’s a bit less straight-up spacey as Hawkwind proper, with a few more jazzy overtones, but if you put this stuff on a comp in between Hawkwind tracks I doubt you’d hear a shocking difference.  Brock’s solo stuff here falls a bit in the sparse-and-experimental category, and is overall of less interest except for “Assassination,” which is more successful. –Guest Contributor (Hawk Records/Voiceprint)