Tag: Peter Hammill

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ROCK and ROLE – The Visionary Songs of Peter Hammill and Van der Graaf Generator by Joe Banks – Book Review

How a magnificent new book helped me rediscover the maverick’s music

*****

The Cover of ROCK and ROLE by Joe Banks published by Kingmaker Publishing.

Often, the route to discovering new music is fairly conventional; there’s no Damascene moment. I found The Cure and Joy Division (and many other bands) by listening to John Peel on BBC Radio One. I discovered The Beatles and Pink Floyd by listening to my older brother’s records (1967-1970 and The Dark Side of the Moon).

Very rarely, pure serendipity can introduce you to music that changes your life. As I have previously described on this blog, I found the music of Steven Wilson by chance when I was making a radio programme about high-quality music production.

On Tuesday, 26 September 1978, Peter Hammill supported Brand X at Manchester Apollo. I went to that gig, probably because I had heard of Brand X through their connection with Genesis drummer Phil Collins, although by then Collins had left the band.

I hadn’t heard of Peter Hammill before I saw him live. I was puzzled that several audience members left after he played. I stayed on to watch Brand X, who were very good. It was only later, when I saw Hammill supporting Marillion in London and the same thing happened again, that I realised some fans had come only to see him, even though he was the support act.

Poster for the Peter Hammill Tour in 1978 with Brand X: ‘The Odd Couple Tour’

At the Manchester gig, I bought the concert programme, and on the back was a picture of a half-shaved Hammill, Janus-like, with one half of his face in the past and the other in the future, promoting his new album, The Future Now, released that month. My programme is long lost, but I still remember his avowed intention to, in his words, ‘carry on’ (I remember the italics, too).

My father, the most important musical influence in my life, came to pick me up from the Apollo. He was as bemused as I was by the strange image. But there was something about Hammill that resonated deeply in my adolescent mind. I quickly became an avid fan, buying all the records I could by Hammill as a solo artist and with his band Van der Graaf Generator.

The music we hear as teenagers often resonates with us for the rest of our lives. There’s more time to listen to music at that age, and our intellectual and emotional influences are more plastic than later in life when adult commitments take over. Nostalgia is powerful. Listening back to the music we loved then, can we be sure it’s good music now? Can we be objective? Does it even matter?

So it came as a surprise to me (and to my friends, family and everyone else that knows me) that I found another artist, Steven Wilson, who had an equally profound effect on me. This was about 40 years later, long past the time when I should still have been discovering new, contemporary music. After I met Wilson about ten years ago, I bought all his solo records and his Porcupine Tree recordings. Something about his music touched my soul.

I began a new journey of discovery, delving deep into the world of contemporary progressive rock, with artists like iamthemorning, Marjana Semkina, Gleb Kolyadin, Hats Off Gentlemen It’s Adequate, Ms Amy Birks and The Beatrix Players. In the meantime, Peter Hammill continued to lurk somewhere in my psyche.

There was a time when vinyl was as popular as a 90-minute drum solo. When we moved house 30 years ago, we were short of space and seduced by the ‘perfect sound forever’ that CDs promised. We sold our turntable and our vinyl. This included my collection of Peter Hammill and Van der Graaf LPs. We kept a few records for the sake of nostalgia, even though we could no longer play them. So I kept my copy of Sgt. Pepper, a couple of albums by The Cure… and Sitting Targets by Peter Hammill…

When I was writing my first-ever blog for this site, How I Found Steven Wilson in 2019 (later updated), words from Peter Hammill came into my mind, like the Ghost of Progressive Past,

I’ve got every one of your records, man,
Doesn’t that mean that I own you? 

'Energy Vampires' by Peter Hammill from The Future Now (1978)

It was late at night in my writing/listening room, and I had to stop to remind myself of the track whose lyrics were lodged deep in my brain. Once again, Hammill spoke to my soul.

I'm not selling you my soul
Try to put it in the records
But I've got to keep my life my own

In 2023, I began a new series on my blog called Off the Beaten Track. The first post was a review of Burn the World by Hats Off Gentlemen It’s Adequate. But it wasn’t long before Peter Hammill’s work floated back into my consciousness with Autumn and A Louse is not a Home, and more recently Mr X (Gets Tense)/Faculty X. I was also lucky enough to see Hammill playing live in Manchester last October.

Off the Beaten Track Logo - nick-holmes-music.com
Off the Beaten Track

My interest in Hammill has been further revived by Father Christmas, who kindly brought me a copy of the new book ROCK and ROLE – The Visionary Songs of Peter Hammill and Van der Graaf Generator by Joe Banks, and the multi-CD box set Peter Hammill The Charisma & Virgin Recordings 1971-1986. Who knew that St Nick (no relation) was a fan of progressive rock?

Reading the Introduction to Banks’ superb book, it’s striking how similar the careers of Steven Wilson and Peter Hammill have been. If you went through the Introduction and replaced Hammill’s name with Wilson’s, many of the statements would remain true:

Both artists have passionate fans, in Hammill’s case described by Banks as ‘true believers.’

Both fronted groups for whom they wrote the music and lyrics (Van der Graaf and Porcupine Tree, respectively.)

Both have pursued successful solo careers but have sometimes returned to perform, record, and play live with their bands.

Both have created music that pushes boundaries and challenges listeners. Try Hammill’s ‘Magog (In Bromine Chambers)’ from In Camera (1974), a ten-minute, frankly terrifying essay in musique concrète, which Banks describes as ‘a bold move even by Hammill’s standards.’ Compare anything under Steven Wilson’s Bass Communion. In prog, no one can hear you scream.

Both artists have been categorised as progressive rock, but that doesn’t do them full justice:

They can write epic prog songs, full of portentous concepts.

They can write art-rock songs.

They can write gorgeous, heartfelt ballads with memorable melodies.

They share a certain cynicism about the world, particularly organised religion and politics. Their lyrics are thoughtful and intelligent, covering a wide range of topics, from the profoundly personal to biting social commentary.

They share, in Banks’ words on Hammill,

“[an] unquenchable creative spirit, consistently pushing at the boundaries of what’s possible.“

The Love Songs (1984) by Peter Hammill

Both artists, recognising that their music isn’t the easiest to assimilate, have released compilation albums which are intended to introduce listeners to ‘the more accessible side’ of their music.

Wilson released Transience in 2016, which included a cover of Alanis Morissette’s Thank You and various radio edits.

Hammill released The Love Songs in 1984, with re-recorded versions of ballads from his previous albums. Banks describes it as ‘a misstep, both artistically and commercially… some of the songs sound positively traumatised by the experience.’ I added to my parents’ trauma by briefly modelling my dress sense on Hammill’s as seen on the cover of the album (see above), complete with white boots. Fortunately, no photographic evidence is available of my sartorial misstep.

Banks’ book is arranged chronologically, with historical context provided for each release, starting with The Aerosol Grey Machine, released by Van der Graaf in 1969 and ending with Hammill’s solo album A Black Box from 1980; the ‘classic years’ when Hammill and his band were signed to the Charisma label. The final chapters address key themes in Hammill’s songs from the seventies, his poetry and prose, and pen portraits of Hammill. The section on the post-Charisma years (of which there are now 45!) sensibly picks landmark albums from those times, including (pleasingly) the aforementioned Sitting Targets, my copy of which has now been reunited with a new turntable….

Sitting Targets, once again sitting on a turntable where it belongs

The book is beautifully illustrated throughout. It includes footnotes, chronological lists of releases and Radio/TV recordings, references and an index, all of which make it easy to navigate the book and Hammill’s extensive career. It’s nicely bound too, rather than just glued together, making it easy to fold flat without causing it a spinal injury.

The most fascinating and valuable aspect of the book is the detailed analysis of each album and each song, with subtly colour-coded pages to make them easier to find. I should declare a professional interest here. This blog, as well as my book on Porcupine Tree and my forthcoming book on Steven Wilson, often attempts a detailed, track-by-track analysis of an artist’s work. As Banks wisely says,

“This is, of course, an entirely subjective exercise, and other interpretations are always available.“

Agreed! It’s fascinating for me to compare Banks’ interpretations of Hammill’s songs with my own. I was amused to read that ‘attempting to describe the music’s flow in detail’ for a song like A Louse is not a Home is a ‘fool’s errand.’ Reader, I went off on that errand…

Banks often comes up with a lovely turn of phrase which perfectly sums up the mood of a song, such as his description of the opening of A Louse,

“With vocal and bass piano in perfect unison, Hammill delivers the opening line – “Sometimes, it’s very scary here” – in a lugubrious, Bela Lugosi voice, a horror show host introducing the midnight movie.”

Banks says that (like Steven Wilson), Hammill has always remained true to his artistic vision, which has always been more important to him than selling records. He does a superb job of reminding us of the unique quality of Hammill’s vision and his astonishing singing voice. The level of detail and insight Banks brings to his analysis will be extremely valuable to long-term fans, but his clarity and enthusiasm will also appeal to curious, open-minded music fans who don’t know Hammill’s music. Banks does what all good music writers should do – make us want to listen to the music he is writing about.

Peter Hammill: A visionary

The design and layout of the book are a model for a music book. Let’s hope that Kingmaker Publishing, founded in 2019, Prog magazine journalist/Big Big Train manager Nick Shilton and Big Big Train founder Greg Spawton, publish more like this in future.

This is a book to treasure, to savour like a bottle of vintage Port, to dip into as you listen to each album and each song. The new box set, Peter Hammill The Charisma & Virgin Recordings 1971-1986, makes a perfect companion.

Peter Hammill The Charisma & Virgin Recordings 1971-1986

Read on…

How I found Steven Wilson
Peter Hammill – Live Review
Off the Beaten Track #4: Autumn by Peter Hammill
Off the Beaten Track # 14: A Louse is not a Home by Peter Hammill
Off the Beaten Track # 16 – Mr X (Gets Tense)/Faculty X from pH7 by Peter Hammill
Van der Graaf Generator – Live Review
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Off the Beaten Track # 16 – Mr X (Gets Tense)/Faculty X from pH7 by Peter Hammill

The Cover of pH7 (1979) by Peter Hammill

With typical sarcastic humour, Peter Hammill named his eighth solo album pH7, when it would have been more logical to name it PH (Peter Hammill) 8. He wrote,

As a measure of acidity/alkalinity pH7 signifies perfect neutral balance; but these recordings are neither neutral nor balanced. The album is, therefore, both jokey and in disguise.

Mr X (Gets Tense) and Faculty X are the last two tracks on the album. It was recorded at Hammill’s home studio, Sofa Sound, in spring 1979 on 8-track analogue tape and mixed at Rockfield Studios in Wales. Other artists who used the Studios in the 1970s included Hammill’s own band Van der Graaf Generator (VdGG), Hawkwind, Mike Oldfield, Queen, Rush… and Showaddywaddy.

The two tracks segue into one ten-minute track, showing Hammill reaching towards the kind of ‘epics a la VdGG’ he had previously avoided in his solo work. The following year, he released his ninth solo album, A Black Box, which features Flight, a seven-part epic that’s nearly 20 minutes long.

It’s easy to see why Mr X is getting so tense. The song opens with the radio news suddenly bursting in: the Sun is crashing to Earth, threatening humanity’s destruction. Mr X seems to represent a normal person (‘the norm, the average… what is this?’) The story may end with his being ‘the last residual/Holder of the torch, conscience of all men.’ He is caught up in the ultimate existential crisis, wondering whether the world will end ‘under fire’ or ‘under ice.’ It’s unclear what humanity’s role is in the end of the world, but Hammill makes it clear that the devastation is man-made. We can’t stop the Earth’s imminent destruction,

The apparatus rolls, no-one here can stop it
Too busy learning more – always knowing less

The track begins with what Hammill describes as ‘loads of loops and stuff… sheer exuberance’, until a piano joins with an awkward, angular and supremely proggy riff, reflecting Mr X’s unease. A blistering bass line almost bursts through the speakers. Hammill’s voice initially sounds a little whimsical. Throughout these two tracks, and indeed throughout his whole recorded output, his voice is remarkably theatrical: the ‘Hendrix of the Voice’. Perhaps only David Bowie, particularly in his live performances, has matched Hammill in his supreme theatricality.

The classical violinist, Graham Smith, who joined VdGG in 1977 and appeared on The Quiet Zone/The Pleasure Dome, provides anguished howls and resonant two-note riffs. Hammill’s voice eventually becomes so passionate that it cracks into falsetto on the words ‘under ice.’ A drumless instrumental passage follows, with dystopian guitar loops. The weirdly heavy drums (Hammill described them as ‘pretty strange’) rouse themselves as the vocals return with even more intensity, accompanied by manic backing vocals from Hammill himself. The track almost becomes unhinged with a babel of voices on the words, ‘Lord, deliver us from Babel’, and a repeated riff that threatens insanity. We enter a strange world of electronic loops, somewhere beyond time and space.

Peter Hammill’s Logo

The next track, Faculty X, starts relatively calmly with a brief moment of optimism, and florid flute flourishes from David Jackson, a long-term member of VdGG and a frequent collaborator with Hammill on his solo albums. But the protagonist soon begins to fall apart again. There is some dense wordplay in the following lines,

Motes in the eye, portcullis is shut…
A skull isn’t much
Of a c-c-castle to live in

The ‘motes in the eye’ recall Jesus’ parable of the mote and the beam in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew, Chapter V). The mote is a speck of dust in the eye, and the beam is a large piece of wood. The parable’s meaning is that before trying to correct the minor faults of others, we should correct our own major faults. Hammill was brought up as a Catholic, specifically as a Jesuit, so would no doubt have been aware of the parable.

He plays on the word ‘mote,’ which sounds like ‘moat,’ the deep ditch that surrounds a castle. He develops the castle imagery further – the castle is the skull, home of human consciousness. The portcullis, the vertical gate into the castle, is shut, suggesting that the protagonist’s consciousness is closed off to new ideas. Hammill stutters on the word ‘castle’, an unusual effect in music, most famously used in The Who’s 1965 single My Generation,

Why don’t you all f-f-fade away (talkin’ ’bout my generation)
And don’t try to dig what we all s-s-say (talkin’ ’bout my generation)

There are various explanations why The Who adopted this style, but in Hammill’s case, it seems to emphasise the protagonist’s paranoia.

In a previous song on the album, written by his former VdGG band-mate, Chris Judge Smith, Hammill sang that it’s Time for a Change, but that song doesn’t offer any solutions except self-expression,

“Please, sir, if that’s alright,
‘I’d really rather like to learn how to be me“

Faculty X offers a much more detailed solution to the desire that ‘The change has got to come. The solution is Faculty X,

It won’t be the drug
It won’t be the sex
It’s got to be the Faculty X

So what is ‘Faculty X’? The word ‘faculty’ is used here in the sense of a mental power, rather than a university department, although Hammill does hint at the latter meaning in the lines, which suggest a university governing body,

I think I’ll have to go,
Go for the governing body
My consciousness elects.

Hammill cryptically writes that the song ‘takes Colin Wilson’s work as its basis.’ The website Colin Wilson Online: The Phenomenology of Excess includes an article about Faculty X and an interview, which explicitly mentions Hammill’s song and The Black Room from Hammill’s second solo album Chameleon in the Shadow of the Night (David Bowie and Mark E Smith of The Fall are also mentioned as fans of the theory). Wilson launched the concept in a lecture in 1967. Encyclopedia.com describes it as ‘a latent power in human beings enabling awareness of a higher reality beyond immediate sense perception.’

Colin Wilson and Faculty X

The English philosopher and novelist describes ‘faculty x’ as ‘not a sixth sense, but an ordinary potentiality of consciousness.’ It’s the ‘ability to grasp reality’ – the ‘reality of other times and places’. It’s exemplified by Proust’s ‘madeleine moment’ in Swann’s Way from A la recherche du temps perdu. A memory of a French ‘madeleine’ cake from Swann’s childhood is triggered so strongly that he exists in both realities at the same time. Wilson writes, ‘Faculty X is the key to all poetic and mystical experience.’

Colin Wilson in Cornwall, 1984. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Faculty X begins with a highly compressed piano sound, hopeful yet slightly ominous. Hammill’s piano and Jackson’s flute are soon joined by Smith’s violin and Jackson’s sax. For a moment, it appears that VdGG are back together again. Hammill’s call for change becomes increasingly insistent. The references to alternative philosophies from ‘seer, sages, prophets, obscurantist tracts’ are accompanied by a sarcastic violin melody which casts doubt on their value compared to Faculty X.

The track descends into a moment of quiet contemplation, as Hammill’s aggressive call for change suddenly becomes tentative, ‘Still, I hope that the change will come’, with a sweet, almost sentimental violin. The track gradually regains its urgency, with a dramatic and stunningly rhythmic return of Hammill’s vocals in the half-spoken words,

‘Meanwhile,
I don’t know,
I think I’ll
Have to go.’

The final minute of the song, after all the pent-up energy of the two tracks, is truly cathartic. We get a deeply personal insight into Hammill’s creativity. He ‘plucks all these characters out of thin air’ and infuses them ‘with meaning as much as I dare.’ Finally, he reaches a moment of complete calm, using the metaphor of swimming back to shore while waiting for the wave to carry him. A gorgeous ending to a pair of remarkable songs.

Peter Hammill: The Charisma and Virgin Recordings 1971 – 1986 (Charisma/Virgin/Universal Music Recordings 2025)

Both tracks are now available in revelatory remixes, in stereo and 5.1 surround sound by Stephen W. Tayler, who has also created surround sound mixes for Van der Graaf Generator, Be-Bop Deluxe, Bill Nelson’s Red Noise, Marillion, Renaissance, Barclay James Harvest, The Moody Blues, Hawkwind and Camel. Tayler has remixed pH7 and The Future Now in surround sound as part of the mammoth box set The Charisma and Virgin Recordings 1971 – 1986.

Sources:

Peter Hammill’s website: sofasound.com
Colin Wilson Online: The Phenomenology of Excess

Read on…

Off the Beaten Track # 14: A Louse is not a Home by Peter Hammill
Off the Beaten Track #4: Autumn by Peter Hammill
Peter Hammill – Live Review
Van der Graaf Generator – Live Review
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Peter Hammill – Live Review

Tuesday 1 October 2025

RNCM, Manchester

Nearly 60 years since first playing in Manchester, Hammill is still a supreme communicator and a powerful performer

****

‘The hits just keep on coming’, quipped Peter Hammill early in his set at the RNCM in Manchester this evening. In 2013, when Guy Garvey interviewed Hammill for a documentary, The Art of Sequencing, which I produced for BBC Radio 4, he asked whether he would sequence his albums by starting with the hits. ‘What hits?!’ replied Hammill. Although not known for chart success, Hammill’s music, both as a solo artist and as leader of Van der Graaf Generator, has been part of the fabric of many lives and internal imaginative landscapes over several decades. The RNCM Concert Hall was packed with appreciative fans, who listened in spellbound silence, mesmerised by the power and conviction of Hammill’s performance.

Last time Hammill was in Manchester, in February 2022, he performed with Van der Graaf Generator, but this time he took the brave but ultimately justified decision to perform completely solo, alternating between piano and guitar. His instrumental playing was compelling, as was his guitar playing on an acoustic guitar. He had to keep retuning his guitar as he hit it so hard. The RNCM’s Steinway grand piano survived his pounding, even in the early highlight, The Lie (Bernini’s Saint Theresa) from The Silent Corner and the Empty Stage (1974), which starts with the line, ‘Genuflection, erection in church’, still startling over 50 years later. Twenty years ago, he was described as ‘the Hendrix of the voice’, and his instrument has inevitably changed as he reaches the latter half of his seventies, but it remains remarkably powerful, and his artistry and ability to communicate remain gloriously intact.

Hammill was always wise beyond his years, a deep and poetic thinker, but now some of his lyrics have gained added resonance as time passes. In Autumn from Over (1977), he wrote,

So here we are, alone –
Our children have grown up and moved away.
Living their own lives, they say…
It all seems very strange to me.

He was a young man when he wrote these prescient words, with which many in the audience would no doubt have deeply empathised. And the grim ending to Still Life from the 1976 Van der Graaf album of the same name, when Hammill embraces death, perhaps means more to Hammill and his fans now. Despite these sentiments, this was a life-affirming experience. Hammill seemed genuinely surprised to reflect that he played his encore, Afterwards, from Van der Graaf’s debut album The Aerosol Grey Machine in Manchester 57 years ago in 1968, when the Hendrix of the voice supported the Hendrix on guitar. Two well-deserved standing ovations confirmed that the audience shared Hammill’s evident pleasure in performing for us.

More about Peter Hammill…

Off the Beaten Track # 14: A Louse is not a Home by Peter Hammill
Off the Beaten Track #4: Autumn by Peter Hammill
Van der Graaf Generator – Live Review
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Review of the Year – 2024 – Prog Rock

2024 was a stunning year for Prog Rock new and old

The Cover of Living and Alive by Beatrix Players
The Cover of  Living & Alive by Beatrix Players

The Return of Beatrix Players

Beatrix Players, led by Ms Amy Birks, made a welcome return to the progressive rock scene in late 2023 with the release of their album Living and Alive. In 2024, they brought the complete album to Manchester’s Band on the Wall and then to a triumphant home gig in the village of Barlaston, near Stoke-on-Trent. Birks was heavily pregnant and jokingly complained of ‘baby brain’; she has since given birth to a baby daughter. In the meantime, Birks and her band were superb live. Birks was a charismatic leader, her wonderfully expressive voice ranging from a warm, low mezzo to a high soprano, sometimes urgent in her delivery and at other times quietly intimate – often in the same song. She was a powerful stage presence, drawing the audience in, as their enthusiastic response showed. 

Myrkur - image by Gobinder Jhitta
Amalie Bruun (Myrkur)

Myrkur – Danish Black Metal and Scandinavian folk music

The Danish composer, vocalist, and classically trained multi-instrumentalist Amalie Bruun released her debut album under her own name in 2006. In 2011, she formed the indie pop duo Ex Cops with Brian Harding. The band split in 2014, and she started releasing music under the name Myrkur, Icelandic for darkness. In late 2023, she released Spine, which combines many of the styles of previous albums into a sophisticated whole, graced by her remarkably versatile voice. The album was partly based on her experience of being pregnant with her son Otto, who was born in 2019.

But the song My Blood is Gold, reviewed here in the ongoing Off the Beaten Track series, is a product of another significant life event: the death of her beloved father, Michael Bruun, in 2021. This profoundly moving track perfectly describes Bruun’s despair at her father’s death and her resolve for his memory to live on through her music.

Bruun brought her music to London in April 2024, demonstrating her versatility as a singer and songwriter in an eclectic set. Over the course of four albums and various EPs and singles, she has combined black metal with Scandinavian folk music, sometimes on the same album. Her latest album, Spine, her most eclectic yet, formed the bulk of the setlist, including a run of six songs at the start of the show. Bruun was joined on stage by Swedish folk singer Jonathan Hultén, the support act, in a gorgeous version of House Carpenter, a traditional Nordic folk song, attracting the most excited applause of the evening.

The front cover of SIRIN by Marjana Semkina
Marjana Semkina on the cover of her second solo album, SIRIN

Marjana Semkina and iamthemorning – a difficult but artistically successful year

Marjana Semkina is a member of the prog rock group iamthemorning with her Russian-born compatriot, the pianist Gleb Kolyadin, both of whom are now resident in the UK. The duo have released several records, the most recent being The Bell (2019) and the EP Counting The Ghosts (2020).

Semkina has recently pursued a parallel solo career, releasing her first solo LP, Sleepwalking, in 2020 and her EP, Disillusioned, in 2021. In 2024 she sang on the Moonflower EP with Zora Cock of Blackbriar, and released SIRIN, her second solo album. Semkina created this album without the support of a record label, raising tens of thousands of pounds for the project via crowd funding. She is an exceptional talent, as a singer and a songwriter, and a passionate promoter of her poetic and profound vision of the world through her music.

Semkina had a challenging year. Her bandmate Kolyadin was arrested and imprisoned in Thailand while on tour as a session musician with the Russian dissident rock band Bi-2. He faced deportation to Russia, where the band could have been persecuted for anti-war sentiments. Semkina highlighted the story via social media and an online petition.

Kolyadin was released after a week in prison and returned to England via Israel. A few days after his release, the duo performed an emotional comeback show at Piano Smithfield in London. Later in the year, the duo were joined by a full band to perform iamthemorning songs at St. Matthias Church in Stoke Newington, London. Semkina began with an evocative selection of her solo material, and Kolyadin demonstrated his supreme skill as an improviser in a solo piano set before the iamthemorning band played a superb band set.

The Cover of Harmonic Divergence by Steven Wilson

An Overview of Steven Wilson’s Year

While fans of Steven Wilson eagerly await his new album The Overview due in March, in 2024 he released a Record Store Day album Harmonic Divergence based on his 2023 album The Harmony Codex. Producer Ewan Pearson also remixed ‘Inclination’ from that album. Alexis Petridis of The Guardian wrote, ‘Ewan Pearson sprinkles sunlit Balearic euphoria’, and Wilson described the remix as ‘a hypnotic cosmic disco odyssey.’

The year also saw the re-release of Storm Corrosion, the collaboration between Wilson and Mikael Åkerfeldt of Swedish progressive metal band Opeth, in a new Dolby Atmos remix. Wilson has been making surround mixes of his own and other bands’ albums for so long now that he has been asked to do a surround sound mix of King Crimson’s Red for the second time after he did his first surround mix of the album in 2009. He decided to teach himself the art of surround sound mixing after Elliot Scheiner created 5.1 mixes of the Porcupine Tree albums In Absentia and Deadwing.

As Mikael Åkerfeldt admitted, Storm Corrosion isn’t an easy listen. However, it is certainly not as challenging to listen to as the albums Wilson has produced for his Bass Communion project, such as Ghosts on Magnetic Tape. Both albums take a while to give up their secrets and bring joy to the listener. In the Dolby Atmos mix of Storm Corrosion, the opening track makes the most startling use of the new technology. On other tracks, the effect is more muted, but when surround sound is used, it’s more effective as it is used sparingly.

Finally, in 2024, Wilson brought festive greetings to his fans with a physical release of his 2023 Christmas song, December Skies, complete with two Wilson-themed Christmas cards. The year also marked the fifth anniversary of the release of love you to bits, Wilson’s album with his no-man bandmate Tim Bowness, a melancholy disco masterpiece.                                        

Cover of Perpetual Motions by Gavin Harrison and Antoine Fafard
Perpetual Motions by Gavin Harrison and Antoine Fafard

Perpetual Change with Gavin Harrison and Antoine Fafard

Gavin Harrison, the drummer in Steven Wilson’s band Porcupine Tree, released Perpetual Motions, his second album with bass player Antoine Fafard, a collection of inventive musical explorations and collaborations from the virtuosic duo and several friends. The album’s title describes the perpetual change of musical arrangement from one of Fafard’s compositions to the next, the only constant being the playing of Fafard and Harrison on every piece. Remarkably, Fafard presented Harrison with complete recordings to add drums and percussion later; Harrison’s playing perfectly matches the pieces so it’s impossible to tell that his recordings were done separately. 

Malcolm Galloway and Mark Gatland
Malcolm Galloway and Mark Gatland of Hats Off Gentlemen It’s Adequate

Malcolm Galloway had a more than Adequate Year

Malcolm Galloway of Hats Off Gentlemen It’s Adequate provided deep insights into his health condition and his writing process in a fascinating two-part interview: Part One and Part Two are here. Galloway and his bandmate Mark Gatland have a new album out in March, The Uncertainty Principle. In the meantime, One Word That Means The World (Arkhipov), one of the singles from the album, was released in 2024. It’s a compelling snapshot of a moral dilemma in which one man’s brave decision probably averted World War III. Hats Off shared the bill in Camden, London with a new discovery for me, the band EBB, who have a wonderful stage presence.

Prog the Forest at the Fiddler’s Elbow

Malcolm Galloway and Mark Gatland, with the promoter London Prog Gigs, hosted a charity prog festival, Prog the Forest, at the Fiddler’s Elbow in Camden. All performers gave their services for free to support the rainforest and wildlife conservation charity, World Land Trust, which ‘protects the world’s most biologically significant and threatened habitats.’ This was the sixth year of Prog the Forest and the most successful to date, raising £2750 to protect nearly 26 acres of rainforest and other threatened habitats.

The eclectic line-up was made up of: Spriggan Mist, a ‘pagan progressive rock band’; singer-songwriter Leoni Jane Kennedy, who was hand-picked by members of Queen for the Freddie Mercury Scholarship and plays acoustic Rush covers as well as her own songs; The Mighty Handful who include a ‘former music director of Strictly; Mountainscape who play instrumental post-metal; Theo Travis of Soft Machine, who has played saxophone and flute with numerous jazz and prog bands; Tim Bowness and Butterfly Mind; and Hats Off Gentlemen It’s Adequate.

Nick Mason's Saucerful of Secrets at Manchester Apollo
Nick Mason’s Saucerful of Secrets

Prog History Brought to Life

The late 1960s to the mid-1970s were arguably the golden era of Prog Rock, particularly in the UK, but as can be seen from the reviews above, the genre continues to thrive, with superb new music being produced both on record and live.

New life has also been breathed into prog rock classics, with the return of Nick Mason’s Saucerful of Secrets with live interpretations of early Pink Floyd songs. Robin A Smith continued to tour Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells – the 50th anniversary, with a stunning new arrangement of the classic album; 2024 was also the 50th anniversary of the release of Peter Hammill’s solo album The Silent Corner and the Empty Stage, from which the epic track ‘A Louse is not a Home‘ is taken.

Special Thanks

With thanks to Jerry Ewing and Prog magazine for keeping the prog flag flying, and to Chris Parkins of London Prog Gigs for his tireless contribution to the live scene in London.

For an overview of the year in classical music in 2024, click here.

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Off the Beaten Track # 14: A Louse is not a Home by Peter Hammill

The Cover of The Silent Corner and The Empty Stage by Peter Hammill
The Cover of The Silent Corner and The Empty Stage by Peter Hammill
The cover of The Silent Corner and the Empty Stage (1974) from which ‘A Louse is not a Home’ is taken

“They don’t make ’em like this any more. Actually, they didn’t at the time. Then, you were a serious concrete artist, or a sensitive singer-songwriter, or an all-out rocker, or a Progmeister, or whatever. Weren’t you? As now…aren’t you? Get in your cage or box! I begged, I beg, to differ.“

Peter Hammill writing about his 1974 album In Camera on his Sofa Sound website

Fifty years ago, in 1974, Peter Hammill had a prolific year, releasing two solo albums In Camera in July and The Silent Corner and the Empty Stage in February. The latter album at times feels like an album recorded by his group Van der Graaf Generator, rather than a solo effort. The song ‘A Louse is not a Home’ was originally meant for the band’s follow-up album after Pawn Hearts (1971) and although the band performed the song on tour in 1972 they split for a while before recording another album. But with Hugh Banton on bass and organ, Guy Evans on drums and David Jackson on saxophone this song feels like a joint enterprise. Hammill has resisted his music being categorised, as shown in the quote above, and his output is notable for its variety, from long-form prog epics to heartfelt love songs, moving ballads (like ‘Autumn‘ from his 1977 solo album Over), heavy rock, the experimental and proto-punk. This track lands firmly in the progressive rock category – it’s over 12 minutes long and is divided into several instrumental and vocal sections.

The song is a supreme example of the range and power of Hammill’s remarkable voice. As Nick Hasted of The Independent on Sunday wrote in 2004,

It’s his singing that always gets talked about first. Hammill once aspired to be “the Hendrix of the voice” and to that end in the late Sixties he blew out amplifiers as if on a mission. John Lydon [Johnny Rotten] admitted partly basing his punk howl on him. 

Each section is given a title in Hammill’s book, KILLERS, ANGELS, REFUGEES published in 1974. The song contains some of Hammill’s most profound lyrics, which stand up well when set out on the page as poetry in his book. It’s a meditation on the nature of modern existence, and the house (or ‘louse’ of the title, a play on the words ‘a house is not a home’) becomes a metaphor for the protagonist’s varying mental condition, creating a work of art that is exhilarating, terrifying, poignant and occasionally optimistic.

Part I The Mirror on the Landing (0:00 – 3:00)

The track begins with Hammill singing very low in his range, like Nick Cave or Tom Waits, with ominous piano chords. This creates a gothic atmosphere which continues throughout the opening section. There’s a touch of madness and melodrama here, with demented saxophone fanfares winding round Hammill’s voice. The language and imagery are gothic too – Hammill uses archaic language such as ‘betimes’. The line ‘a cracked mirror ‘mid the drapes’, creates an image of the protagonist withdrawn from life, like the Victorian poet Lord Tennyson’s Lady of Shalott, who lives in a high tower in a castle on the river that flows to Camelot,

'The mirror cracked from side to side;
'The curse is come upon me,' cried
 The Lady of Shalott.'

From The Lady of Shalott (1832) by Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809 - 1892)

The protagonist thinks he could make his home in another castle, a ‘lofty, lonely Lohengrinic castle in the clouds’, a reference to Neuschwanstein (literally ‘new swan stone’) Castle in Bavaria, named by King Ludwig II (1845 – 1886) after the Swan Knight, the title character in Richard Wagner’s opera Lohengrin (1850).

Neuschwanstein Castle, Schwangau, Bavaria, Germany.
The ‘Lohengrinic castle in the clouds’ – Neuschwanstein Castle, Bavaria. Image © Thomas Wolf. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

A pastoral passage with gentle flute poignantly evokes the protagonist’s desire to ‘find a place to hide my home’, somewhere to withdraw from the world. Earlier in this section Hammill’s voice becomes so menacing and distorted that it’s reminiscent of one of Hendrix’s distorted guitars, but his voice is much quieter and more contemplative here. A short, elegant, almost Baroque section for piano and woodwind leads to Part II.

Part II The Mental Ferule (3:00 – 7:00)

After the brief moment of respite, the second part leads to a brutal bass line and weighty drums, with syncopated rhythms, very characteristic of Van der Graaf at their most progressive and extreme. Hammill’s vocals are so agitated and unsettled that they almost fail to keep time with the backing instruments. The first ‘house’ in this section is made of glass, adapted from the expression ‘people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones’, used to describe hypocrisy. But Hammill instead uses the glass house as a metaphor for paranoia, a place where ‘every movement is charted.’ The monitor screens – now dark – which usually watch his every move, remind us of the ‘telescreens’, the two-way video screens in George Orwell’s dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) through which Big Brother surveilles the population. But even when the video screen is switched off, there’s another presence in the house,

'Sometimes I get the feeling
There's someone else there:
The faceless watcher, he makes me uneasy
I can feel him through the floorboards
And his presence is creepy'

It appears at first that the ‘presence’ could be a ghost, or even a supernatural being or presence, a common trope of horror films such as Paranormal Activity (2007). But the next ‘house’ suggests a religious presence, the human soul or conscience, or perhaps even God himself. Although the house is now made of ‘brick or lead’ like a traditional English home, there’s overtly religious imagery here, describing a spiritual journey to a higher existence. This relates to the state of religious ecstasy described in another track on the album ‘The Lie (Bernini’s St Theresa)’. (See ‘Peter Hammill and the Jesuits’ below). On the current track, Hammill describes devouring fruit, presumably the Biblical fruit of knowledge, and laying your body before the shrine.’ But instead of reaching St Theresa’s swooning state of grace, as shown in the image below, the protagonist worships at the altar of high art, ‘with poems and posies and papers.’

But the religious image soon returns. The title of this section, ‘The Mental Ferule’ may need a little explanation, particularly as googling the word ‘ferule’ brings up the word ‘ferrule’, a piece of rubber or metal that protects the end of a walking stick or umbrella. A ‘ferule’ according to Collins English Dictionary, is an instrument of punishment, ‘a flat piece of wood, such as a ruler, used in some schools to cane children on the hand.’ The protagonist asks what home is, and one possibility is a, ‘beating at the hands of your Protector’. This could refer to being beaten at school, although the capitalisation of the word Protector1 suggests that Jesus, who is often known as the Defender and Protector of Christians, is inflicting the punishment. The religious ‘idol’ may have ‘feet of clay’, or in other words have human faults. The strange presence referred to earlier is now also given capitals, ‘I’ve never actually seen Him, but I know He’s in my home.’ This image relates back to the gothic imagery of Part I – it’s revealed that it’s a religious Force (again with a capital) that ‘cracks the mirror.’ The whole section is a frightening but invigorating description of the deepest of existential and religious crises. Although the protagonist’s relationship with God is ambiguous at best, he fears what might happen if He (God) leaves the house. In one of the most poignant moments in the whole song, the protagonist, very sweetly voiced here by Hammill, breaks down, no longer knowing what he believes,

'And if He goes away
I can't stay here either
I believe... er... I think...
Well, I don't know...'
Closer view of central figures, Ecstasy of Saint Theresa by Bernini

Peter Hammill and The Jesuits

Peter Hammill spent nine years at a Jesuit boarding school. He told Nick Hasted of The Independent on Sunday that in his view the Jesuit brotherhood rarely produced faithful Catholics because, ‘they’re too fierce … It’s the SAS of Catholicism.’ But he respected their intellectual rigour, their questioning of everything. ‘I’m not remotely Catholic’, he told Hasted, ‘But my daughters have all gone to Catholic schools, partly because they’ll have that questioning too.’

The song ‘The Lie’ (Bernini’s St Theresa)’ describes an emotional and spiritual reaction to the statue Ecstasy of Saint Teresa in the church of Santa Maria della Vittoria in Rome, by the Italian sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini ( 1598 – 1680). The statue shows the Saint in a state of religious ecstasy. The protagonist is tempted by all that she offers, but ultimately rejects her,

You took me, gave me reasons for
Saints and missals, vigils
All the more holy martyrs
I’d embrace you and walk through
The one-way door
I’d embrace you
But it would be just another lie

Image: Detail of Ecstasy of Saint Theresa by Bernini. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Part III Home is (7.45 – 12.31)

Part II segues into the final part, Hammill’s gentle falsetto voice drifting disturbingly upwards as other instruments join and the song slowly rallies itself. Instrumentally, Part III is very much a Van der Graaf song, sounding like the prog rock epic ‘A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers’ from Pawn Hearts (1971). This section takes the protagonist even deeper into his existential crisis. He finally realises that his home could be inside him,

'Home is home is home is home is home is home is home is me!'

The sentiment is similar to that of the poet T.S. Eliot in Four Quartets

'Home is where one starts from. As we grow older
The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated
Of dead and living.'

From East Coker, Four Quartets (1943) by T.S. Eliot (1888 - 1965)

But despite this realisation about home, the protagonist’s existential, crisis gets even worse,

Day is just a word I use
To keep the dark at bay
People are imaginary, nothing else exists
Except the room I'm sitting in
And, of course, the all-pervading mist -
Sometimes I wonder if even that's real

There is at least a moment of truth when he wonders whether even the mist is real, but he has reached a very low point. The track ends with an anthemic section, similar in musical feel to the end of ‘A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers’. But whereas that track ends on a note of hope, ‘Begin to fell very glad now…’, the current track poignantly collapses into ruins, with organ chords that feel they are about to resolve into a concrete ending but never do,

'Sometimes I think I'll disappear, sometimes I think...
I... I... I...I...'

This final failed attempt to assert an identity, after over 12 minutes of existential angst, is very moving, ending one of Hammill’s finest songs.

The Back Cover of KILLERS ANGELS REFUGESS by Peter Hammill
The back cover of the book KILLERS, ANGELS, REFUGEES Words 1966 – 1973. Image © Anton Corbijn/Peter Hammill/Sofa Sound

Sources

KILLERS, ANGELS, REFUGEES Words 1966 – 1973 (Second Edition Sofa Sound, 1980)
Hasted, Nick Peter Hammill: Heart attack music (The Independent on Sunday 27 June 2004)
sofasound.com

  1. It should be noted that there is inconsistency in the use of capitalisation. For instance the lyrics on Hammill’s website capitalise the word ‘Protector’ whereas the book uses the form ‘protector’. ↩︎

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Off the Beaten Track #4: Autumn by Peter Hammill

Peter Hammill and Guitar from the Cover of Over

Peter Hammill, lead singer with the English prog rock band Van der Graaf Generator wrote the song ‘Autumn’ for his 1977 solo album Over before he was thirty, but it is imbued with the wisdom and sadness of a much older man. Many of the tracks on Over mourn the loss of a long-term relationship, but this song describes a different kind of loss, much later in life. The protagonist and his wife have reached the autumn of their lives and their children have fled the nest. They have given their children everything they could but now receive little in return.

The song features only Hammill’s multi-tracked voice, piano and the violin of Graham Smith who was briefly a member of Van der Graaf and played on their 1977 album The Quiet Zone/The Pleasure Dome. The simplicity of the production perfectly matches the painful, inward nature of the emotions expressed.

The vocals are raw, the voice cracking with emotion and bewilderment at the protagonist’s loss, low in the vocal range, sometimes half-spoken and intimate. At times the baritone voice is joined in a melancholy duet by a falsetto voice an octave above, perhaps the voice of his wife who shares his loss.

The piano part features a bleak, almost tuneless falling motif like the last leaf of autumn drifting confusedly from a tree. The violin is close-miked, naked and passionate, like the last raging against the dying of the light.

The song almost breaks down completely about 90 seconds in, but manages to rouse itself as the voice becomes almost incoherent with pain. At around 2.40 some sort of equilibrium is reached, but the voice cracks again as the protagonist laments his lost dreams.

The track ends with chillingly poignant lines which describe a similar sense of loss that future generations will suffer,

I wonder how long
It will be till this song
Is sung by our own sons and daughters?

A beautiful, achingly sombre conclusion to an immensely powerful song.

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Van der Graaf Generator – Live Review

The Bridgewater Hall, Manchester

Tuesday 22 February 2022

Prog rock band still generating sparks in Manchester over 50 years on

****

In one of those lovely disambiguations on Wikipedia, Van der Graaf Generator the rock band are not to be confused with the electrostatic machine the Van der Graaff Generator. Both are capable of creating electric sparks.

Founded 55 years ago in Manchester, the rock band fronted by singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Peter Hammill returned to Manchester – where they were formed in 1967 – with a mixture of more recent songs and some classics. The band were on hiatus for many years and at different times while Hammill pursued his solo career. Hammill’s back catalogue is massive – he has recorded around 50 studio albums as a solo artist and with the band. In the world of prog rock, perhaps only Steven Wilson has been as prolific, has maintained such a high standard of songwriting, and has remained as true to his own unique vision.

The latest line-up of the band features Hammill himself on guitar, keyboards and vocals and two members of the band who first joined in 1968, Guy Evans on drums and Hugh Banton on keyboards. Material was drawn mostly from the 60s and 70s and from this century, both from Hammill’s solo albums and the band’s records. When the band returned for an encore an audience member shouted ‘1976’ and Hammill smiled ‘earlier, actually’, going on to sing a sweet-voiced version of the anthemic Refugees from the 1970 album The Least we can do is Wave to Each Other.

Hammill came on stage wearing a loose-fitting white suit, looking like an avuncular housemaster from a minor public school who had just come off the cricket pitch. The capacious stage of the Bridgewater Hall, which can accommodate a full symphony orchestra, looked a little bare with only three performers and their equipment, and there was no light-show or video screens. All the drama was concentrated in the musical performances and the formidable but strangely moving songwriting.

Hammill’s voice is still a remarkable instrument, coloured by his phenomenal ability to act out a song. Sometimes it was conversational, sounding like the singer of a French chanson, at other times half-spoken like the sprechstimme used in German classical music in the early part of the twentieth century. At times it was pensive as in Do Not Disturb, at other times terrifying as in the cry that opened Nutter Alert; it was clear that Hammill has no intention of going gentle into that good night. Sometimes it was an instrumental texture, as in parts of Childhood Faith in Childhood’s End, going from a whisper to a roar in very short space of time.

Strong support to Hammill’s vocal was provided by drummer Guy Evans whose work was subtle, fierce, jazzy, military, busy, simple as required. Hugh Banton’s organ playing was bluesy, dreamy, contemplative, jazzy, funky, hymn-like. There was a remarkable range of tone, texture and dynamics from just three players. If there was the odd slip, absence from touring due to Covid was a good reason. Hammill announced Masks by saying that they had decided to play the song during the Covid lockdowns but were not sure if they could pull it off; spoiler alert – they could. The song took flight with a full prog instrumental passage and a wailing guitar. Poignantly, Hammill announced at the end of the concert that the band would not be able to meet the fans and do signings afterwards as they had to remain in a Covid bubble with crew. But despite the enforced lack of contact with the audience, the band had communicated through the music which was challenging, disturbing, cinematic, horrifying, intimate, dramatic, reflective, endlessly twisting and restless, always fascinating. And ultimately uplifting.