Space rock, from the outside in. Each step is a genre and the single record this encyclopedia would put on first. Play them in this order and the last one should sound like a next step rather than a wall.
- 1 The way in
Rock 1954
The whole family: guitar, bass, drums and a beat borrowed from blues and rhythm and blues. Every branch below grows out of this trunk, metal included.
Sung. Melodic singing throughout.
Put on
The Beatles - Revolver, if you want to understand why everything branched so fast.
The Beatles, Revolver (1966) - 2 Then
Psychedelic rock 1966
Effects, sitar, feedback and songs that fall apart halfway through. The lab that produced prog, space rock and, indirectly, doom.
Sung. Melodic singing throughout.
Put on
Pink Floyd - Interstellar Overdrive. Ten minutes that explain half this tree.
The pick names a track. This is the record the encyclopedia holds by them.
Pink Floyd, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn (1967) - 3 What you asked about
Space rock 1969
A repetitive riff under a thick layer of synthesizers and cosmic whoosh. Lemmy went straight from here into Motörhead.
Sung. Melodic singing throughout.
Put on
Hawkwind - Silver Machine. That's Lemmy singing, two years before Motörhead.
Hawkwind, Hawkwind (1970) - 4 Where to go next
Deathrock 1979
The American version, more punk and more theatrical, with tribal drums and horror-movie imagery.
Sung. Melodic singing throughout.
Put on
Christian Death - Only Theatre of Pain. Rozz Williams was nineteen when he wrote it.
Christian Death, Only Theatre of Pain (1982)
Assembled from the tree: every genre Space rock descends from, in order. Space rock has no subgenres, so the last step is the genre that rates closest to it by sound.