Towards the end of the year Hawkwind released their final album of the decade, which to me was their best album since 'The Chronicle of the Black Sword' three years earlier, and featured some tremendous guitar work from Huw Lloyd-Langton.
Meanwhile, in the latter part of '87 I'd begun a series of home recordings which continued right through into 1989; but about 3/4's of the output was done in 1988. The Tascam Porta-studio was designed to record onto cassette, and during this period I recorded more than half a dozen C90minute cassettes worth of material.
I have to admit of course that although I'm very proud of some this music, there is quite a lot of long, self-indulgent stuff in there which only the most ardent Hawkwind fan and/or acid-head would appreciate. But although a lot of it was modelled on Hawkwind, including many of my own versions of their songs; it also became a vehicle for me to experiment with some of my earliest influences, going right back to my childhood fondness for 1950's rock and roll.
Initially I just recorded a few songs using the guitar, but it soon became apparent that in order to help create the various ambiances that I wanted for this music, I needed some sort of keyboard. So I bought myself a small, half-size Yamaha Portasound keyboard, which had a very basic drum machine built-in , and 100 different voices; which I modulated with digital delay, and chorus effects pedals.
I was no keyboard player, but I could grasp some simple chords; enough to create the kind of sound backdrops that I wanted.
As well as the new material and songs which I composed in this period; As part of the ongoing project, I recorded versions of all the songs that I had written myself up to that point; going back to the first songs that I wrote for Dancing Shiva in 1982 and '83.
Here is a small selection of some the music I recorded at this time:
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