Van der Graaf Generator / Peter Hammill S& D, C or D?

i'm really not hearing whatever it is you dislike so much in this record. i put on godbluff and he can't sing like he could in 1975, but that was pretty obvious already.

this is leaden, plodding - the changes don't work - the guitar is awful - the melodies are turgid - it's got none of the old wild magic - probably time to pack it in

hammill's always been an awful guitarist, but i can tolerate it better here than i can on "world record". honestly they do sound like they're about to pack it in, particularly if you listen to that last track, but to me they're going out on a high note. it doesn't have that old wild magic- forty years is a long time- but it's got a magic all its own. about as good as "prog rock" gets in 2016, imo.

only just dipping my toe in but imago is v wrong, there is some great stuff on this album. "Aloof" sounds horribly produced and doesn't work very well but, y'know, try listening to the rest of the album?

"Aloft", obv. you know what i mean.

I bought and listened to the whole thing! I will definitely return to it a few times, but the initial impression wasn't good. Also, every reunion has at least one stunner (Every Bloody Emperor, Over The Hill, Your Time Starts Now) and I can't detect what this album's high point is. I guess Almost The Words seemed like it might be decent.

i do find them more akin to Hammill's solo records when Jackson's not there tbf

maybe not, scratch that. i like some of what's happening musically more than the songwriting i guess, but Hammill's solo stuff is frequently a bit thin on hooks too so

it's nice to hear vdgg taking on the bacharach/david songbook but honestly "bunsho" sticks with me probably more than "your time starts now" does.

the post-jaxon records are for me some weird middle ground behind the older band and his solo stuff. reminds me of nothing more than stuff like "skeletons of songs". i love "skeletons of songs".

I'm not entirely convinced by any of the post-Jackson records but I think this is the best of the three so far. Thought the last one was fairly underwhelming.

3rd listen and it's sitting better with me as a whole, in fact i think it might be rather legit good

I'm enjoying Sitting Targets v much rn. Got a post punky thing going on.

Yeah that's a great record! I feel like it's really overlooked.

https://www.uncut.co.uk/blog/down-a-different-river/van-der-graaf-generator-things-went-bit-mad-108028

Good interview

Amazing footage of them performing "A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers" (all 24 minutes!) on Belgian TV in 1972:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asPDvjUYFy4

Wow

I love that clip. Hammill's toast the camera at the end. :)

Happy 70th big guy :)

Fun fact: Peter Hammill guested onstage with The Stranglers in 1980... there's a version of 'Tank' that has Hammill on vocals and Robert Fripp on guitar.

As for VDGG, of course I rate everything from the first LP up to World Record highly.

whoa, HB dude haha

Yes, Hugh Banton dude.

this could turn into an "is your child texting about Van Der Graaf Generator" meme quickly

My wife who, in general, is very tolerant of whatever noise I'm blaring around the house (the Fall, P Ubu, "Lulu", skronk-jazz, etc) but VDGG is on the strict "no play list", haha

only halfway through it but this collaboration album with Isildur's Bane is pretty awesome and not at all what I expected

how so?

I haven't heard a note from Isildur's Bane but I kinda assumed they were just another neo-prog band (I just looked 'em up...they're not), so I was pretty surprised by how modern and chaotic it sounds. Plus it's odd to hear Hammill's voice processed like this. My only gripe is that it's not produced very well.

am going to have to break down and buy this since it doesn't seem to be on streaming services.

A few UK gigs for VdGG just announced, with European dates to come. This may well be the last VdGG tour, so interested parties should make efforts to attend.

The vers of "Still Life" on Vital is so good

Man, Flight (from 'A Black Box') is sooo damn great.

Flight was my first experience with Peter Hammill. Hadn't yet witnessed VdGG although I knew the name from the Chrysalis inner sleeves on my Genesis lps. A Black Box had just been released and a campus radio programmer decided to play its entire second side. I remember being blown away by just that single listen for a few days afterward. Wished I'd taped it b/c the album was import only in Canada and not easily found. It took me another year before I could locate a copy and hear it again. In the interim, I'd picked up a couple of other Hammill solos from the same era (The Future Now, pH7) but none brought the same effect.

A Black Box is still my favourite of his, alongside Sitting Targets and This.

FSOL and paul weller, too???

https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/the-amorphous-androgynous-and-peter-hammill/we-persuade-ourselves-we-are-immortal

Interested to know how this turns out.

A really interesting Swedish TV performance with PH in '74 has just surfaced, some fans opted to buy the license to the footage after being given the nod by the man himself - who says he cannot remember doing it - to share on FB.

https://fb.watch/4bzKWtk4Hu/

Swiss actually

Ooops sry

That's a fascinating discovery. His piano playing alone is a little too crude to capture the subtleties of the songs, a guitar number in the middle might have broken it up a little.

Dunno, have you heard his guitar playing?

Yes, he's not a great guitarist. His piano playing is his piano playing, that's what he does! Anyway, these performances are not that different from the recorded versions, which are very much based around his piano, crude or not.

Right, but without backing vocals, Mellotron, etc. his piano style can get monotonous. The Silent Corner stuff is also at an unrelenting pitch of intensity; I saw him twice in 2008 and the mix of songs from throughout his career helped create variety in mood and playing style.

Enormous 20-disc VdGG box set just announced for autumn release:

https://store.udiscovermusic.com/*/*/The-Charisma-Years/70JW0000000

CDs of his late 70s solo albums are dwindling away, I hope they're reissued soon, I haven't heard anything past Over, it's been a long time

Wish they'd abandoned the CDs-in-cardboard-slits approach and give the discs solid mini-LP sleeves. Packaging- if not content-wise the Bowie boxes do this best (hardback in line with spines).

The remastering of these albums c.2004 was on the loud and harsh side, so hopefully the new versions will be less so.

Oh, looks like there are 3-disc sets for each album getting the 5.1 treatment (H to He, Pawn Hearts, Godbluff, Still Life) with both mixes on CD and blu-ray, plus bonus tracks on the CDs.

And yeah, a Hammill box would be useful.

The remastering of these albums c.2004 was on the loud and harsh side, so hopefully the new versions will be less so.

Ha, holy cow yeah they were and yes a Hammill 70s solo box would be great cuz I always feel like I have everything and then it turns out he's got ANOTHER solo jawn

Oh good I’m glad the album are getting individual releases!

albums

This is a weird one, why shoot a video for this song? Did they think they could get a hit single with it? And who are the motley crew of people watching?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxWoYmb3MKw