Sunday, January 22, 2012

Nigel Potter - Technophobian CD

Hear The Track Here

You might not know it to look at me, but I am a bit of a cult. (Ed: err, might have spelt that wrong Gilmore) Well, not me per se but a project I was hugely responsible for, as a musician and as a (fledgling) producer. In fact, it was the first record I ever produced. Since it's release too many years ago to count, that album has become significantly more popular as time went on, and the internet seems to have brought it to another stage. And all this happened because of a - at the time - little known genre of music referred to as 'spacerock' Although I was never offically a spacerocker myself, I was part of it's inaugural launch courtesy of space pioneers Hawkwind who I toured with and made that notorious album with. For ****'s sake Gilmore, you weep, stop bigging yourself up.

Not true varmint, there is a point to this other than my ego...

Nigel Potter was also part of that scene and still is. In fact, as far as I know he is one of the only online exponents of the genre that actually understands what the musical term actually means in terms of style. See, for a while there Hawkwind were awesome, one of the hardest hitting live shows I have ever seen so to me they pretty much ARE spacerock. Consequently, whenever I hear the term I automatically turn on the Hawk scanner - very little passes that test. If anyone can do it properly, Nigel can. Technophobian is an 11 track CD (12 if you count the bonus track) and as a long time Nige fan I grabbed the chance of reviewing it. As with all legimate spacerock the CD has to be taken as a totality, so you know that the first 55 seconds of Zen Gun *(track one) is going to lead to a headbang of catacylsmic portions. That proves to be the case and, I have to say, Nigel carries the spacerock banner as if he was born. The sound, the moves, the vocal everything speaks of the orginal ethos behind the genre, brought up to date with Nigel's trademark precision. The bonus track is a continuation of Zen Gun, but it works well in either guise.

As regular readers are aware, Nigel Potter comes (no pun intended obviously, this is a family review) in two flavours of spacerock; Hawkwind or Floyd. Our last encounter was Necromancer (February 2011) and that was very floydian and I much preferred the punkier, rougher Hawkwind vision so it's a given that Technophobian is going to go down well with me. Despite what Nigel may think, I actually have a great respect for the genre and - I have to admit - am totally unforgiving when it plainly isn't what it says on the tin. If you want an audio demonstration of what true spacerock should sound and act like I point you to The Last To Leave, track three of this excellent set of tracks. That says exactly how it should be. Technically, Technophobian is flawless and something Nigel should feel rightly proud of. Something as good as this album has taken a lot of work and patience, and it shows in every note. He seems to float between the two sides of his spacerock character with ease, each track offering up a different facet of the mystery that is spacerock. Remarkable achievement and there is no doubt....

MUST HAVE spacerock.

No comments: