Epoch Eclipse : The Ultimate Best Of Hawkwind

Hot on the heels of the 25 Years On box set, Epocheclipse completely betrays the promise of its "official" origins, and that despite being irreproachable in terms of what it includes. It's what it overlooks that is the problem. Compiled by management rather than fans, Epocheclipse hits all of the right songs... of course it does; a Hawkwind "best of" practically compiles itself. It is around the edges that it lets us down, eschewing an overall view of the band's complete history by delving into the dustier corners for rarities, oddities, and forgotten contributions in favor of simply grabbing whatever is closest to hand -- a couple of tracks from this album, a couple more from that one -- it's lazy, is what it is. Furthermore, while 25 Years On tried to include something from every period of the band's, to deliver the full story, Epocheclipse allows great swathes of the story to pass by undocumented. It's still a terrific collection, of course, and anybody coming across a copy should snap it up immediately. It just seems sad that a band of Hawkwind's stature should have such a narrow view of its own history, when there are so many other worlds that they could have explored. ~ Dave Thompson