L
Made in Woodstock with Todd Rundgren, Utopia and Don Cherry: two sixties covers, a suite recorded only at full moon, and his biggest hit album.
Steve Hillage, 1976
- Released
- 24 September 1976
- Recorded
- May-June 1976
- Studio
- The Secret Sound, Woodstock, New York
- Label
- Virgin (Atlantic in the US)
- Producer
- Todd Rundgren
- Length
- about 44 minutes
Play on hypersongs (1)Play on hypersongs (2)
Hillage and his flatmate Chris Cutler were Rundgren fans, and when the chance to work with him came, Hillage said, he thought: fantastic, let's do it. The sessions in Woodstock used Rundgren's band Utopia, Roger Powell, Kasim Sulton and John Wilcox, with the jazz trumpeter Don Cherry, the tabla player Larry Karush and Sonja Malkine playing a fifteenth-century hurdy-gurdy. The Lunar Musick Suite was recorded only at the full moon. The sleeve is dedicated to all optimistic visions of the future; Hillage never explained the title, which many fans read as love.
It opens with Donovan's Hurdy Gurdy Man and closes with George Harrison's It's All Too Much, and it reached number ten in Britain, the high point of his solo career. Sounds praised its mix of 1960s psychedelic experiment and 1970s expertise, and AllMusic compared his riffing to Hendrix.
Track listing
- Hurdy Gurdy Man6:32
- Hurdy Gurdy Glissando8:54
- Electrick Gypsies6:24
- Om Nama Shivaya3:33
- Lunar Musick Suite11:59
- It's All Too Much6:26
Personnel
- Steve Hillage guitar, vocals, synthesizers, shehnai
- Miquette Giraudy voice, vibes
- Roger Powell keyboards, Moog
- Kasim Sulton bass
- John Wilcox drums
- Don Cherry trumpet, voices, bells, tambura
- Larry Karush tabla
- Sonja Malkine hurdy-gurdy
More from Steve Hillage
Fish Rising (1975), Motivation Radio (1977), Green (1978), Rainbow Dome Musick (1979)
Sources
- L (Steve Hillage album), Wikipedia
- L (Virgin, 1976), Discogs
- Steve Hillage interview, Aylesbury Friars (2012-03)