Steve Hillage

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Steve Hillage is a British musician, best known as a guitarist. He is associated with the Canterbury scene and has worked in experimental domains since the late 1960s. Besides his solo recordings he has been a member of Gong and System 7.

[edit] History

Hillage was born Stephen Simpson Hillage in Chingford, London, England on 2 August 1951. While still at school, he joined his first band, a progressive rock band called Uriel, with Dave Stewart, Mont Campbell and Clive Brooks. The band split up in 1968 with the other members going on to form Egg, but they briefly re-united under assumed names to record the album Arzachel in 1969. Hillage also guested on Egg's 1974 album The Civil Surface.

In 1971, Hillage formed a new band, Khan, who released the album Space Shanty in 1972 before splitting. He went on to join Kevin Ayers' live line-up, and in 1973 he became guitarist with the eccentric space rock outfit Gong, in time for their "Radio Gnome Trilogy".

After a brief stint in charge of Gong, Hillage went solo in 1975, his work partly continuing the Gong mythology. He made a name for himself as a guitarist and prog-rock / fusion composer and performer in the post Hendrix / pre-punk scene of the 1970s. His L album was recorded using musicians from Todd Rundgren's Utopia, while Green was produced by Pink Floyd's Nick Mason.

These 1970s works (tacitly in collaboration with his longtime girlfriend Miquette Giraudy) blended complex studio production techniques with dreamscape anthems and hooky, progressive passages of new world lydian electric fusion. With lyrics about "electric Gypsies", Hillage was seen as something of a hippy figure, and his sales took a fall with the arrival of Punk rock. Hillage himself was somewhat enthusiastic about the energy and freedom of Punk rock and his 1979 album Open includes the unambiguously punky 1988 Aktivator (which originally appeared on the vinyl album Live Herald), whilst other songs have an identifiable, if diluted, punk flavor.

Hillage spent time in the Ladbroke Grove area of London, home of the UK Underground and worked with Nik Turner founder member of Hawkwind (one of the original Underground Community Bands).

During the 1980s, Hillage worked as a record producer, working for artists such as Simple Minds, Cock Robin and Robyn Hitchcock. He returned to producing in the 90s, working on The Charlatans self-titled disc in 1995.

After hearing the likes of The Orb playing his 1979 ambient record Rainbow Dome Musick, Hillage teamed up with Giraudy again in the early 1990s to form their own ambient dance act: System 7. They soon became part of the underground dance scene in London. Hillage also produced in the 1990s a raï musical show called '1, 2, 3 Soleils', featuring Algerian singers Faudel, Rachid Taha and Khaled he also arranged many songs of Latifa.

Since the mid-1990s, Hillage has been an important contributor to Rachid Taha's music, as guitarist and producer.

In November 2006, he made a surprise return to the Gong fold when he and Giraudy performed at the Gong Unconvention in Amsterdam, both under Hillage's name (playing material from the 70's albums) and as members of Gong. This seems likely to be more of a one-off than a continuing reformation, however.

In January 2007, four of his albums - Fish Rising, L, Motivation Radio and Rainbow Dome Musick - were released in the UK remastered on CD, each, except the latter, with previously unreleased bonus tracks.

In February 2007, Green, Live Herald, Open and For To Next/And Not Or followed, similarly remastered with bonus content.