Price paid: £7, Haystacks Music (Hay-on-Wye). 

The late Huw Lloyd Langton (1951-2012) represents a curious figure within the storied saga of Hawkwind. A more-or-less founding member of the group, he was a mere eighteen years old when he hooked up with Dave Brock, Nik Turner and co, jamming around Notting Hill at the tail end of the ‘60s, and his somewhat Gilmour-esque lead guitar work formed one of the more prominent elements of the band’s embryonic debut LP.

Shortly thereafter however, Langton exited Hawkwind (and seemingly the music industry as a whole) after suffering what can only be described, in the parlance of the times, as a severe freakout midway through an epic, acid-saturated residency which saw the band performing for several days straight within an inflatable geodesic dome illegally erected outside the gates of the 1970 Isle of Wight festival (which was actually charging people to enter if you can believe that - super uncool, man).

Some commentators (including Joe Banks, author of the recently published Hawkwind: Days of the Underground) have identified Hawkwind’s failure to replace Langton as one of the key factors which subsequently allowed the band’s signature sound to coalesce. Certainly, their position as a major ‘70s rock band without a conventional lead guitarist seems noteworthy. Brock’s relentless concentration on grinding, rudimentary barre chords went a long way toward establishing their now widely recognised proto-punk cred, whilst the lack of a melodic lead instrument conversely helped push them further toward the kosmische/‘krautrock’ realm, with Turner’s heavily effected woodwinds, DikMik and Del Dettmar’s primitive electronics and (later) Simon House’s baroque synthesizers all stepping up in turn to fill the void.

As valid as this argument may be however, regular readers will be aware that I am inclined toward the belief that any piece of music can be improved with the addition of a ragin’ guitar solo or two, and as such, I can’t help but find myself ruing Langton’s absence from Hawkwind’s golden age recordings, wondering what this pivotal / invisible figure may (or may not) have contributed to the grandeur of the Space Ritual, had he only kept his head together and made it to the shuttle in time for take-off.

Brave listeners who have allowed their Hawkwind “cut off point” to dawdle far beyond the Lemmy era though will of course had their chance to find out just what HLL (if I may) had to offer, as, in the dying days of the 1970s, he popped up again, seemingly out of nowhere, bringing a new sense of energy which to a great extent helped the band to retool themselves for the ‘80s, following the unedifying collapse of their Robert Calvert-dominated late ‘70s futurist art-pop era (which is another story entirely).

Langton’s work during his second tenure with Hawkwind can perhaps be best appreciated on the ‘Live ‘79’ LP, recorded mere months after he re-joined. Therein, his searing, virtuosic lead shred often dominates proceedings, suggesting that the poor lad may well have spent his ‘lost years’ obsessively practicing scales and lab-testing new amps. [Actually, Langton had spent ’75 to ’77 playing with the group Widowmaker, formed by ex-Mott The Hoople guitarist Ariel Bender - Fact Checkin’ Ed.]

Given the speed with which talented players were usually ejected from Hawkwind’s orbit under Baron Brock’s oft-paranoid leadership, Langton actually proceeded to hang on for quite a while too, overseeing the band’s transition to a more streamlined, metallic hard rock sound through the ‘80s before finally departing, for reasons unknown to myself, in 1988. (“All was not well with the band,” Wikipedia notes ominously.)

Which brings us, finally, to The Lloyd Langton Group, with whom Langton seems to have performed and recorded in parallel with his Hawkwind commitments through the mid/late ‘80s. Released in ’85 through the West London-based independent label Flicknife (who also handled the bulk of Hawkwind’s output through this period), ‘Night Air’ was their first proper LP, featuring a power trio line-up completed by Kenny Wilson on bass and drummer John Clark.

A consummate set of soaring, propulsive chromium-plated guitar rock, the album to some extent plugs straight into the legacy of the ‘70s underground, but does so with class rather than retrogressive boorishness, with the pioneering work of Martin Weaver (Wicked Lady / Dark) in particular providing a useful reference point, not least on the killer, slow-burning riffage of obvious single ‘Call Your Number’.

At the same time though, ‘Night Air’ is recognisably a product of the ‘80s. Though avoiding the more obvious clichés, its sound palette is redolent of that decade in a way that’s difficult to really put into words. Emptying out my brain-pan in search of a way to convey this highly specific ‘80s indie label trad rock sound, all I can really come up with is the impression of a time when yr average rock band guys used solid state amps, and actually thought they were cool. The warm, fuzzy weirdness which carried through from the late ‘60s into AOR’s imperial phase in the ‘70s has been squashed down here to a colder, sleeker sound, funnelled to the recording desk via lo-tech circuit boards and square, bakelite-coated boxes.

It’s a sound which makes me think of rack-mounted units fronted with cheap-looking black plastic, rows little knobs picked out in lime green or cherry red; of old speaker stacks reeking of tobacco, dragged out from some pub’s old backline, and of subterranean rooms done out like futuristic packing warehouses. None of which is meant as a criticism, I should stress - Langton’s guitar tone is often great here, whirring and whirling like a fairground organ on the extended outro to ‘Before is All’. It’s just… different, that’s all.

Conversely, there are some slightly Floyd-ish “introspection in the country house” type moments creeping in too here and there (you can hear ‘em in Langton’s strained middle-class voice and the faint ‘atmospheric’ keyboards just about discernable on the opening track, and in the faux-medieval acoustic recitation, reverbed just so, which closes out side one) - even though I daresay the closest these guys ever got to the shining castles of the rock aristocracy was zooming past a picturesque gatehouse or two on a mid-week schlepp up to a gig in Wolverhampton.

Overall, side # 1 probably fares best here. In addition to the aforementioned ‘Call Your Number’, the album’s title track, with its plaintive, minor key melody, singing-in-my-real-voice vocals and general air of sonic ambition transcending cash-strapped production, actually isn’t a million miles away from a late ‘80s Bevis Frond banger, whilst the upbeat ‘Painted Evergreen’ sounds like the kind of thing Motörhead might have come up with, had they taken their foot off the gas and spent a few weeks fortified by nothing but Earl Grey and scones.

Side # 2 largely stays on-message musically speaking, even as ‘Diseased Society’s lyrical concerns hit that hyper-specific “psychedelic hangover meets nebulous Thatcher-era social criticism” sweet-spot (you know the one), before ‘Lonely Man’ and ‘Candle Burning’ allow Lloyd Langton to spread his musical wings a bit, exploring more melancholic, spaced out territory, with creditable, if not exactly mind-blowing, results.

Only the closing ‘Lunar-Tic’ seems like an outlier - a sort of drugged out, post-punk-ish experiment whose jerky, cyclical rhythms and muttering, pub-loony vocals close out what has has otherwise proved a surprisingly uplifting and affirmative record with a dose of the kind of gloomy discombobulation you’d reasonably expect of a man best known for having blown his brains out with LSD and disappeared from view over a decade beforehand.

For the most part though, the material on ‘Night Air’ feels far more energised and inspired than the rather lumpen, “will-this-do?” approach taken by Hawkwind’s output during the same time period, suggesting that Lloyd Langton was already saving up his A-game for his solo work. Stronger writing and more nuanced playing bring a greater sense of excitement and forward momentum to proceedings, with the distant echoes of SF paperback psychedelia enhanced by Ande Tucker’s absolutely terrific interplanetary cityscape artwork, ironically providing the Lloyd Langton Group with a rocket-propelled kick that Hawkwind had largely abandoned by this point.

Though it’s unlikely to quite make the grade as a ‘lost classic’, anyone who shares my fascination with UK freak-rock and its aftermath should nonetheless find ‘Night Air’ a solidly rewarding listen, joining a few dots between sounds, scenes and personnel in engaging fashion, suggesting that the enigmatic Huw Lloyd Langton was, above all else, a gentleman of refined taste and no little talent - may he rest in peace.

‘Night Air’ by The Lloyd Langton Group gets a seemingly fairly blurry thumbs up! 

Labels: album reviews, Hawkwind, Huw Lloyd Langton, old LPs