By: Stuart Benjamin
Nik Turner | website | facebook | bandcamp |
Released on October 16, 2015 via Cleopatra Records
I once saw Nik Turner playing live in the cellar of a pub in Swansea. It was probably with The Nik Turner All Stars, his jazz funk ensemble of the 1990s (or something like that). My friends and I had made ourselves some large flares in honour of the great man’s visit and being so inclined, I covered my flares in all manner of (to my mind) mystic symbols. Proper loons they were by the time I’d finished them. And so, suitably trousered, we set off into the cold, dark, night. Damn good he was too, and he told one of my chums that he liked our flares. Aside from admiring our sartorial experiments, Turner was always a quality musician, shamefully ignored by the mainstream, but much like the band for which he is best known and was a founder member of – Hawkwind – he has endured beyond the cat calling of his critics and detractors to establish himself as a highly regarded figure in psychedelic music.
It’s no surprise then, given his stature on the scene, that Turner has been able to assemble an impressive roster of guest musicians on his latest album that most of us can only dream about. Space Fusion Odyssey features no less faces than Billy Cobham (Miles Davis Band, The Mahavishnu Orchestra), Robby Krieger (The Doors), Steve Hillage and Gilli Smyth (Gong), John Weinzierl (Amon Düül II), John Etheridge (Soft Machine), Chris Poland (Megadeth) to name-drop more than a few. So with talent like this on board it better be good right? Right.
Well it’s not an album that breaks any new ground. As you would expect with a group of space-rock fuzz-rock intergalactic musketeers there’s plenty of distorted guitars, squelchy-funky keyboards flying along blissed-out acid-drenched tangents. So, no surprises – Turner clearly knows his audience and gives them what they want. I loved it. You may or may not depending on your love (or otherwise) for Turner and the bands from which his guest artists are drawn. Some may try and convince you that ten long off-world instrumentals is a bit self indulgent. For me, it’s as if a decision was made to cut to the chase and get straight on with the trippy solos and instrumental breaks rather than waste time with all that writing lyrics, building up a song nonsense that weighs down all the other bands. I’m a self-indulgent person myself, so fifty-plus minutes of psychedelic jazz workouts are right up my alley, along with my homemade flares.
What is particularly interesting is spotting all the influences that Turner draws on for this recording. Arguably he has a clear love of visionary jazz pioneer Sun-Ra and Space Fusion Odyssey often feels like an open love-letter to Sun-Ra at times. But listen hard enough and there are also hints of Fela Kuti – another saxophone player come bandleader – and the progressively long and semi-improvised music sections of the Afrika ‘70 or the Egypt ‘80. Like Kuti at the heart of the action is Nik Turner delivering abstractly face-melting squalling blasts with his saxophones and flutes, sometimes distorted, sometimes not, but always driving the machine, or flying the spaceship, or whatever comparison you’d like to draw.
From the first note to the last you are drawn into a universe hermetically sealed in it’s own bubble where – for the length of the album, only its own rules seem to make sense. In fact, if you think of Space Fusion Odyssey as something of a song-cycle rather than trying to isolate individual tracks you’ll go some way to understanding how it fits into your aural landscape, play it on repeat and there’s a danger you may not emerge for some considerable time – much like the classic Hawkwind albums of old (Space Ritual, Doremi Fasol Latido, to name but two).
It’s also, quite often, a surprisingly groovy record with an innate funkiness that draws on its Afro-futurist roots. You could place it quite comfortably in your record collection alongside Herbie Hancock’s Sextant or Headhunters as much as you could with all your Hawkwind discs. It’s all work that shares a common DNA of tribal beats, shamanism, and celestial transportation (either via naturally euphoric and drug-assisted states); music, if you will, that seeks to transport the listener to somewhere outside of humdrum day-to-day existence. There’s an indelible link between the primitive musical forms of African and British tribalism, a proto-Stoner Rock, that Turner has always been able to draw upon and Space Fusion Odyssey continues a trend that has been a constant presence in his work.
Highly recommended for acid casualties, those who’d go a long way for a good groove, and amatuer trouser makers.
