A highly skilled guitarist known for his fluid, effects-heavy playing, British musician
Steve Hillage has collaborated with countless musicians and influenced several genres over the course of his lengthy career, particularly space rock, prog, ambient, and techno. Initially associated with the Canterbury Scene during the late '60s and early '70s,
Hillage played in groups such as
Uriel and Khan before becoming a key member of psychedelic cult favorites
Gong during the '70s. He launched his solo career with the ambitious 1975 prog rock suite
Fish Rising. While albums such as 1977's
Motivation Radio contained some of his most accessible material, 1979's groundbreaking
Rainbow Dome Musick eschewed lyrics and rhythms for extended guitar- and synth-based meditations, helping to pave the way for ambient and new age.
Hillage spent much of the '80s in the producer's chair, working with a diverse range of artists from
Robyn Hitchcock to
Genesis'
Tony Banks. In the early 1990s,
Hillage and partner
Miquette Giraudy co-founded the techno/trance group
System 7 and collaborated extensively with techno pioneers such as
Derrick May and
the Orb on albums like 777 (1993) and
Power of Seven (1995);
Hillage also lent his distinctive guitar playing to
the Orb's classic 1992 single "Blue Room."
Hillage reunited with
Gong for several concerts between 2006 and 2010 before parting ways again. Most of his releases since then have either been archival concerts or new
System 7 recordings.
Steve Hillage was born August 2, 1951. In 1967 he co-founded the group
Uriel with bassist Mont Campbell, organist
Dave Stewart, and drummer
Clive Brooks; the unit subsequently continued on as the trio
Egg upon
Hillage's 1968 departure for university. He did not return to music for another three years, reuniting with
Stewart in 1971 in Khan, which recorded the 1972 prog rock effort
Space Shanty before soon splitting.
After touring in support of
Kevin Ayers,
Hillage joined
Gong, winning acclaim for his echo- and delay-heavy brand of guitar work over the course of the group's 1972-1975 "Radio Gnome Invisible" trilogy (consisting of the LPs
Flying Teapot,
Angel's Egg, and
You). In 1975,
Hillage went solo with the album
Fish Rising, the first fruits of a longstanding writing partnership with keyboardist
Miquette Giraudy. He next traveled to New York to cut 1976's
L, produced by
Todd Rundgren and featuring guest appearances from
Utopia as well as jazz great
Don Cherry.
At the peak of the punk era,
Hillage's work was by no means fashionable, but he pressed on regardless; in 1977, he issued
Motivation Radio, an album recorded with
Malcolm Cecil (the creator of an influential early electronic project, the studio-synthesizer
T.O.N.T.O.). He subsequently issued 1978's
Green, 1979's
Rainbow Dome Musick (an early ambient outing) and
Open, and 1983's
For to Next/And Not Or, but as interest in his music continued to dwindle,
Hillage turned to production, helming records for the likes of
Robyn Hitchcock and
Simple Minds.
By the close of the 1980s,
Hillage had largely disappeared from music; however, in 1989 he was visiting the ambient room of a local club when, much to his surprise, his own
Rainbow Dome Musick began to play. He introduced himself to the DJ, one
Alex Paterson, and soon
Hillage was working with
Paterson's seminal group
the Orb. Out of their collaboration grew a new
Hillage-
Giraudy project,
System 7, a dance collective also comprised of club luminaries including
Paterson and fellow DJ
Paul Oakenfold.
After debuting with an eponymously titled 1991 LP,
System 7 plunged completely into blissed-out ambient sound on 1993's 777, which reached the Top 40 on the U.K. album charts. Released in 1994, Point 3 appeared in two different versions: the first,
The Fire Album, offered heavy beats and rhythms, while
The Water Album featured drumless mixes of the same music. With 1996's
Power of Seven,
System 7 turned to Detroit techno, recruiting the services of mixers
Carl Craig and
Derrick May. The group continued to release studio albums for many years to follow, including
Golden Section (1997),
Seventh Wave (2001),
Encantado (2004), and
Phoenix (2008).
Hillage also reunited with
Gong on the album
2032, released in September 2009. A DVD document, Live at the Gong Family Unconvention, was also released that year.
Hillage spent the lion's share of his time over the next half decade devoted to a wealth of
System 7 and
Mirror System (that band's downtempo alter ego) projects. 2013 saw the release of Phoenix Rising, a collaboration between
System 7 and Japanese vanguard unit Rovo. Billed to
Rovo System 7, it offered a 21st century version of
Hillage's classic sound.
He also supervised releases of recordings only available previously as bootlegs including Rainbow 1977 (2014) and Madison Square Garden 1977 (2015). The guitarist made a guest appearance on
Nik Turner's Space Fusion Odyssey along with
Robbie Krieger,
Billy Cobham,
John Etheridge, and
John Weinzierl. Searching for the Spark -- an exhaustive 22-disc box set of
Hillage's work spanning several decades, from
Uriel's
Arzachel to
System 7's debut -- was released in 2016. Düsseldorf, an official release of a 1979 concert, appeared in 2017. Another archival release originally from 1973, Golden Vibe, was issued in 2019. ~ Jason Ankeny & Paul Simpson