The Overseas Projects arose when Cleopatra Records wanted to re-release Nik Turner's 1978 Sphynx album in the US. Virgin, who owned the rights to the album, played hardball, and so it was decided to record a new version using the original flute music, which (as we know) was recorded in the King's Chamber in the Great Pyramid on a cassette player powered by a motorcycle battery. Members of US band Pressurehead would accompany Nik on a reinterpretation of the original songs, along with Helios Creed, once of Chrome, whose album Half Machine Lip Moves is often heard in the abode of Hermes the trickster.

The US tour to promote the album mutated into a show called Nik Turner's Space Ritual and featured a set that also included songs by Nik's old squeeze. The band was joined by the legendary Del Dettmar (formerly of Hawkwind) on double-bladed wood axe. Del has also played with Nik, Mick, Thomas, and Terry in the current incarnation of Space Ritual.

A recording from the tour was released on video and CD in 1995. This particular performance from San Francisco also features Alan Powell (formerly of Hawkwind too) on percussion and Genesis P Orridge - performance artist, industrial provocateur and (currently) hyper transsexual.

This DVD release from Cherry Red brings together the original video release plus additional video footage of the band on tour, both backstage and onstage.

The band itself has a sleek and sprightly sound, shaped around Tommy Grenas' sprinting rhythm guitar and Paul Della Pelle's springy drums. Helios Creed's lead guitar caresses the music like Michelangelo in cheap aftershave sussing out a slab of stone. Del's wood axe threads through the sound like a needle in a Marshall stack.

The oddball FX from the original video release work for Hermes in 2006 on a 14" iBook. Watching a DVD doesn't necessarily require a six-pack and a Balti these days.

The backstage diary captures life on the road as we know it. Holiday snaps. Snatched telephone conversations in phone boxes. Interviews punctuate time. Ghostly sound checks. Only in America, a woman enters the dressing room to ask if she could "tell my grandchildren I've been kissed by Nik Taylor?"

Del fingers the perps in those inner sleeve photos from Hawkwind's Hall of the Mountain Grill, including Pete the roadie who used to play drums whenever Simon King "left the stage puking and crawling off". He talks with obvious pride about the onstage sonic apparatus on the sleeve photos of the original Space Ritual album and explains how "we worked all through the night putting them all together."

Del's own performance on double-bladed wood axe is to the fore on a great version of Brainstorm. The footage shot alongside the band onstage is terrific. Nik, in his black and white garb set off by a pink slash of hair, is brought alarmingly to life as a Marvel comic featuring Kabuki versus German Expressionism.

The band - Nik Turner, Helios Creed, Del Dettmar, Len Del Rio, Tommy Grenas, Paul Fox, Paul Della Pelle, with guests Genesis P-Orridge and Alan Powell

Performance from The Great American Music Hall 15:02:94 - Ejection, D-Rider, Master of the Universe, The Awakening, The Right Stuff, Armour for Everyday, Nirbasion Annasion, You Shouldn't Do That, Thoth, Silver Machine

Bonus material - "Behind the scenes tour diary of the band's 1995 trek across the USA, featuring a generous mix of live clips"