This album is not just a tribute to Pink Floyd’s lost experiment; it is a celebration of sound in its purest, most unfiltered form.

Steve Swindells has had a long and varied art career and Tim Forster contacted him to find out more.

One of the Spirits Burning: A Musical Memoir is an unusual book, it is part musical autobiography, part guide book, part instruction manual!

The great thing about this book is the way the interviews have been internally structured and themes brought to the fore by Banks’ questions with his notes at the end of each interview clarifying or bringing extra information to bear.

Despite song writing credits being spread throughout the trio there is a real sense of cohesion, it is an art piece, a body of work not just a collection of songs. Superbly paced, with ‘Relativity’ Hawklords and their collaborators have produced a classic space rock album. 

If you want a big hearted, kind, amusing book that expands out from an easily neglected experimental, adventurous stream of music to discuss Britain now and in the 60s and 70s this could be the book for you.

In a sophisticated act of appropriation and detournement he managed to bring these two aspects together in his performance art as the ‘Biggles of Arabia’ persona; a composite figure visually constructed from historic images of hegemonic masculinity but who was actively engaged in propagating a world view that was in opposition to the capitalist system and the militarist nation state.

Robert was a multidisciplinary artist of remarkable talent and diverse skills with an unusual level of productivity.

The subject matter of Robert Calvert’s plays and intended plays evidence his political and social concerns that often found their way into Hawkwind songs. Concerns and awareness about corporate and government corruption, self perception and presentation, the deleterious effects of capitalist consumerism, technology and ethics often underpinned Robert’s writing and intended writing.

Robert Calvert was frequently in collaborations and continually in conversation with the world around him, his work often inspired and influenced by the work of other writers.

Calvert’s writings frequently explore ‘time’ and how it is experienced by the individual. From In Search of Space to the intriguing line, ‘sideways through time’, in ‘Silver Machine’, to the experience of a striking worker on Freq, Calvert plays with and explores the relationship of humanity with the past, present and future.

Tim Foster dives into one of the great post punk/new wave albums, ’25 Years On’, released in 1978 by Hawklords.

Tim Forster talks with Maria-Christina Harper, founder of the experimental Harper Trio, and discuses spiritual and psych jazz, the advantages of intrumental only music, and their new album, Passing By.

Robert Calvert’s work does engage with moral questions and give expression to his own views and positions on a variety on issues ranging from capitalism, state violence, racism, corruption to vivisection.

It would work as a stand alone documentation of an extraordinarily experimental and creative time and place but of course works best as an accompanying piece to No Machos or Pop Stars.

This article will look at Robert Calvert’s lyrics, poetry, prose and interviews from the perspective of futurology or future studies.

The underlying characteristics of Gabriel’s tour 2023 are courage, humility and trust. . . in an individualised, alienated, competitive political economy it was an evening that subtly pointed to other, better models of society.

makingmusic.org.uk comments: “The flexible and democratic nature of folk music. . . has given it a political dimension that persists today” . . .Megson are proof of that claim, their song writing dealing with the mundane and everyday but also engaged with contemporary working class experiences and struggles in a way that parallels Ruts DC.

In October 1978 I went to see Hawklords at Leicester De Montfort Hall, I was blown away…central to it was Robert Calvert, the most charismatic and convincing frontman I have ever seen. It maybe possible, through tracking reoccurring themes and interviews, to get a clearer idea of the writer’s views.

Mirror Mirror is an intriguing, engaging piece of performance art that speaks to us in 2023 about gender, relationships, consumer capitalism’s baleful effects on our self esteem and the power of social media.

By drawing on European avant garde resources in the construction of their art and music Hawklords were able to articulate both the alienation and mundanity of labour under capitalism and an internationalist revolutionary working class position in opposition to (transnational) capital.