Motivation Radio

After the success of their previous album, Steve Hillage and Miquette Giraudy went off to Los Angeles to record Hillage's third solo album, Motivation Radio—this time under the production guidance of Malcolm Cecil. Cecil, along with Robert Margouleff, recorded as Tonto's Expanding Head Band; they released an album of electronic music in 1971, which ultimately led to a stint producing Stevie Wonder, among others. Joining as the rhythm section were session musicians Joe Blocker on drums and Reggie McBride on bass. The album surrenders a lot of Hillage's spacey-ness for a more direct song approach; an odd departure, considering that Cecil, with his TONTO (The Original New Timbre Orchestra) machine, was something of an electronic synthesizer pioneer. With the strumming of acoustic guitar, the simple song "Hello Dawn" briskly opens. The band then funk it up and rock with "Motivation;" while the heavy riff of "Light in the Sky" has a metal flavor (dig the chorus). Only "Radio" returns to the familiar glissando, yielding to Hillage's trademark guitar lines. The second side's "Wait One Moment" is another mellow track, imparting Hillage's spiritual message of the new age. "Saucer Surfing" has a lot more Gong-ness to it, including silly voices in the fade. "Searching for the Spark" sees the first real domination of synthesizers, though it's the hypnotics of "Octave Doctor" that are truly original; Blocker and McBride provide the foundation for the track, but the clock-like precision relies on the guitarist's Eventide delay for tempo. The album concludes with Buddy Holly's "Not Fade Away (Glid Forever)." Even with an awful record cover (a hippieish looking Hillage superimposed over a satellite dish), the album still charted in the UK, reaching No. 28.