A compelling mix of science fiction with the personal and the political
****
The core of the modestly-named prog rock band Hats Off Gentlemen It’s Adequate consists of Malcolm Galloway (vocalist, multi-instrumentalist and producer) and Mark Gatland (bass, backing vocals, keyboards and co-producer). Their latest album, The Light of Ancient Mistakes isn’t a concept album as such, but it contains multiple overlapping themes, including politics, history, current affairs, failure of communication, threat, and the mistakes humans have made…and continue to make – as Oscar Wilde said in 1891 in his philosophical novel The Picture of Dorian Gray,
“Experience is merely the name men gave to their mistakes“
There’s also a strong science fiction influence on the album, particularly the award-winning British novelist Adrian Tchaikovsky. The longest track on the album, ‘Walking to Aldebaran’ is inspired by Tchaikovsky’s novella of the same name, and some of the instrumental tracks on the album take their titles from characters in Tchaikovsky’s books, such as ‘Avrana Kern’ (from Children of Time) and ‘Gothi and Gethli’ (from Children of Memory). Philip K Dick is also referenced, in the instrumental track ‘The Man Who Japed’, Dick’s 1956 science fiction novel.
Like the best science fiction, The Light of Ancient Mistakes urgently engages with contemporary issues. Galloway says that the track ‘Walking to Aldebaran’ was partly inspired by the dehumanisation of our enemies that enabled guards at Auschwitz to regard their victims as monsters, just as the Tchaikovsky novella describes the transformation of a man into a monster.
There’s another literary source, for the track ‘The Glamour Boys’ which takes its name from the book by Chris Bryant, the MP for Rhondda. The Glamour Boys is subtitled ‘The Secret Story of the Rebels who Fought for Britain to Defeat Hitler.’ It tells the story of a group of young, queer MPs who revealed the extent of Hitler’s brutality well before the Second World War and were branded ‘the glamour boys’ by Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain to suggest there was something untoward about them. The song is sung from the perspective of one of the MPs.
The political, in a much wider sense, is also the inspiration behind ‘Sold the Peace’ which describes politicians who won the Cold War but ‘sold the peace.’ The title track, ‘The Light of Ancient Mistakes’ is inspired by Iain M Banks’ novel ‘Look to Windward’ published in 2000. The protagonist of the song is an artificial intelligence, who according to Galloway is ‘trying to show the futility of cycles of hatred to someone planning an act of mass destruction.’ The book describes an explosion that destroys the sun, and ‘Burn the World’ looks at the effect of catastrophic climate change (see the review of that track here in the new Off the Beaten Track series).
The more personal is reflected in the track ‘Sixteen Hugless Years’, which movingly describes the emotionally-starved childhood of the late spy novelist John le Carré who was beaten by his father and abandoned by his mother. And the most personal track on the album is ‘imtiredandeverythinghurts’ a heartful cry of pain from Galloway who has what he describes as the ‘invisible disability’, Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome which causes chronic pain. Both of these songs are much more direct than others on the album, approaching punk in their delivery rather than prog. This is entirely appropriate – as John Lennon once said in response to those critics who criticised the simplicity of the lyrics to his song ‘I Want You (She’s So Heavy’) from The Beatles’ White Album (1968), if you are drowning you don’t shout that you would be incredibly pleased if someone would have the foresight to throw you a rope; you simply scream.
If those two songs are very simple, there is plenty for prog fans to enjoy elsewhere. In particular the complex bass guitar and keyboards lines are a highlight, as are the Floydian guitar solos in several songs. Galloway’s vocals are compelling too, sometimes reminiscent of Tim Bowness of no-man; elsewhere there’s a touch of the urgency and yearning of Bowie – the vocals on ‘Sixteen Hugless Years’ have something of the feel of Bowie’s Five Years from Ziggy Stardust (1972). The album is nicely paced too, with gorgeous widescreen instrumentals like ‘The Requisitioner and the Wonder’, and several versions of ‘The Anxiety Machine’, interspersing the vocal tracks. And ‘Walking to Aldebaran’ is a multi-faceted drama in its own right. A thoughtful, highly literate and political album that forms a very satisfying and coherent whole.
Sources
Notes by Malcolm Galloway
The John Lennon interview with Rolling Stone magazine by Jann S. Wenner, 4 February 1971
Nick Holmes Music 
One Reply to “”