Four Ever Rainbow: Steve Hillage
Posted by: steve | From: August 05, 2005
An englishman who started a prog-ish rock band at the age of 16 (in 1967) went on to play in bands named Uriel, Khan, and Gong then had a solo career that included both blazing amazing prog albums on the level of Yes that were all about fish and made incredibly beautiful soft ambient pre new age music, produced Robyn Hitchcock and Simple Minds records, and then formed an electronic dance music "collective" called System 7 (that also featured members of The Orb and Paul Oakenfold) that was powerful a forerunner of progressive house and trance is clearly the Greatest Band of All Time. Steve Hillage is this man.
Before going solo Hillage was known as a powerful warrior of the weapon known in the biz as "the axe," for all your laymans, that means guitar. In Gong, which was a pretty big prog band Hillage was revered for his "blazing solos" and "mind melting licks and riffs." Hillage could not be so easily defined as only a "guitar warrior" or "guitarrior." He had much more in him, and after Gong's triumphant Randio Gnome Invisible trilogy of albums Hillage left Gong and recorded his first solo album, Fish Rising in 1975. The opening track "Solar Musick Suite" is an epic 16 minute prog romp that really sets the creative tone for Hillage's solo career. The music is incredibly complex, but not just wanky and pompous like some prog music can tend to be. Fish Rising is a really excellent album that shows Hillage slightly shying away from the shredding solos and focusing more on the band as a whole and the songs shifting and the different parts, even though there are a few wicked rippers.
Hillage's next album, L, is a bit of a conundrum. It was produced by Todd Rundgren and features some rad guests like jazz great Don Cherry. It is much more eastern influenced than Fish Rising, which can be cool at points, but at times feels a little slapped on there. To further deeper the confusion factor, the album opens with a cover of Donovan's "Hurdy Gurdy Man," and closes with a cover of George Harrison's "It's All To Much," which ends up being a lot of covers on an album with only 6 tracks. Speaking of Donovan, doesn't Hillage look like Noah Georgeson of The Pleased and Devendra Banhart's band. L has some really sublime moments though, like "Lunar Musick Suite" (a sequel to "Solar Musick Suite"). Overall, L is a bit lacking.
Hillage made a few more solo album becoming less Yes-y and more Pink Floyd-y, but also not as consistently powerful as the first two. In 1979 Hillage took a sharp left turn and released Rainbow Dome Musick. With only two tracks, "Garden of Paradise," and "Four Ever Rainbow" the album clocks in at about 43 minutes. You do the math. Rainbow Dome Musick is gorgeous. Near rhythm less, and completely voice less the album is an ambient classic. All Music Guide says about the album "Rainbow Dome Musick is too avant-garde to be classified as a new age album and too sleek sounding to fit into any progressive rock subgenres, but no matter how it's categorized, it's an excellent example of Steve Hillage's adeptness and vast musical background." The album opens with the sound of water flowing softly and is joined then by layers of rising and falling keyboards that somehow sound like pyramids. Hillage brings the perfect guitar work to the album giving you the exact amount of note movement that is needed. The album also features these bells that are Hillage's signature all the way back to Fish Rising. They appear at the start of a track sometime and they set a tone of clarity, and sound most appropriate on Rainbow Dome Musick .
Hillage never made another album quite like Rainbow Dome Musick. In the 80s he mostly produced other bands, but when Rainbow Dome Musick was refound by some influential music makers at the time (Alex Patterson of The Orb) Hillage got back into creating himself. He formed System 7 which alternated between making blissed out electronic ambient music and making proto progressive house/techno/trance. System 7 became leaders and grand old dames in the electronic music scene releasing records every 3 or 4 years.
Steve Hillage may have had some silly lyrics, and he may have made a prog album about fish, and he might not have always been consistent, but he made an album called Rainbow Dome Musick and he made the album amazing enough that that title actually made sense and that makes him The Greatest Band of All Time.
Post a comment:
respect
Posted by: adam forkner at August 5, 2005 06:13 PM