FIE Records
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"Consequences" is Peter's thirtieth solo studio album of original songs.Visit product page →
Ten jittery new pieces which stretch the boundaries of the form. Some are wordy, or about words - and miscommunication, mishearing, misapprehension. Around another corner, lives and actions are overheard, overseen, characters stalked and surprised.
Sometimes these pieces stray into the territory of the short story or screenplay - something is happening just outside the frame, just beyond the range of vision. Distanced from the norms of songs though they are, a strong narrative thread runs through the heart of each recording.
The instrumentation centres on electric guitars and a variety of pianos. Percussion is sparse. The occasional interjection of other instrumental colours enhances rather than expands the sonic picture. Central to the realisation of all the songs are authoritative vocal performances in lead, backing and choral roles.
Once again the whole thing is written, performed, sung and recorded entirely solo. "Consequences" is a weighty addition to Peter's body of work.
Songs include:
1. Eat my Words
2. Bite my Tongue
3. That Wasn't What I Said
4. Constantly Overheard
5. New Pen-pal
6. Close to Me
7. All the Tiredness
8. Perfect Pose
9. Scissors
10. Bravest Face
11. A Run of Luck -
While continuing to play his part in the ongoing career of Van der Graaf Generator - indeed, perhaps because the louder side of his nature is very much fulfilled in that environment - Peter has found himself increasingly drawn towards genuine solo performance when under his own name.Visit product page →
Over a series of tours he has reconnected with songs old and new in the ultimate stripped-down format of piano and voice, guitar and voice.
This double CD, taken from concerts in Japan and the UK in 2010 is Peter's first solo live recording since 1999's "Typical" and shows him at the peak of his powers, pushing and stretching both himself and the material into and out of shape.
One CD is of piano songs, the other guitar ones, following a matrix first laid down in the Tokyo shows. The songs are taken from the length and breadth of Peter's career and this release, documenting his solo performance style, is an important addition to his body of recorded work.
Tracklisting:
Disc 1:
1. Easy to Slip Away
2. Time Heals
3. Don't Tell Me
4. Shell
5. Faculty X
6. Nothing Comes
7. Gone Ahead
8. Friday Afternoon
9. Traintime
10. Undone
11. The Mercy
12. Stranger Still
13. Vision...
Disc 2:
1. Comfortable
2. I will Find You
3. Driven
4. The Comet the Course the Tail
5. Shingle Song
6. Amnesiac
7. What's it Worth?
8. Ship of Fools
9. Slender Threads
10. Happy Hour
11. Stumbled
12. Central Hotel
13. Modern
14. Ophelia -
Sold out"Thin Air" is Peter's twenty-ninth solo album of original songs. It's been an eventful few years for Peter: a heart attack in December 2003 was followed by the Van der Graaf Generator reunion - both on stage and on record - in 2004/5. "Singularity," his last solo work, was released in 2006 and since then he has been deeply involved in the ongoing story of VdGG, now reconstituted as a trio and moving on from strength to strength.Visit product page →
These new recordings, then, mark a return to solo territory, but in the knowledge that the band is still an ongoing entity. Peter therefore decided to make this set of recordings a genuinely one-man effort, playing and singing every note on the disc. As might be expected of an artist now more than forty years into his career, these are adult songs, addressing grown-up themes. The songs are of disappearance, of loss, of dislocation. Often we know in advance that what we hold will be lost; sometimes the loss comes as a complete surprise.
The disappearances in our lives can be of culture, of people, of buildings, of relationships; this is the natural order of things rather than the exception. The themes of disappearance thread their way across nine pieces of impressionistic breadth. With piano, acoustic guitar and Peter's inimitable vocals to the front of the soundstage there is space left at the rear for fragmented sonic disturbances to be splashed across the songs.
Familiar elements of Peter's writing and recording styles are here, of course, but the combinations are put together in such a way as to make something new and challenging out of the whole. This is a worthy, fascinating and mature addition to Peter's body of work, which remains uneasy listening. It doesn't look as if he will be disappearing just yet.
Tracklisting:
1. The Mercy
2. Your Face On The Street
3. Stumbled
4. Wrong Way Round
5. Ghosts Of Planes
6. If We Must Part Like This
7. Undone
8. Diminished
9. The Top Of The World Club -
Sold outPeter's last solo studio recording, 'Incoherence," was released in 2004, having been completed a day before he had a heart attack. Since then he's been occupied with the Van der Graaf Generator reunion, first in recording "Present" and then in the run of live shows undertaken in 2005; he was also responsible for remastering the VdGG catalogue. In 2006 "Veracious," a set of live duo performances with Stuart Gordon, was released and Peter also remastered the solo CDs which he had recorded for Charisma in the 70s.Visit product page →
Little wonder, then, that when he came to write and record "Singularity" intimations of mortality and considerations of history both public and personal were uppermost in his mind. The main theme here is the long dive down into not being who we were....
Perhaps inspired by the early Charisma recordings, "Singularity" is absolutely a solo record on which Peter sings and plays all instruments alone. This is not, though, a folksy singer-songwriter effort. Experimentation and change have always been important to Peter and some of the sonic landscapes encountered here are strangely new. Warped electric guitars and vocals crushed into slabs of noise are as likely to appear as grand pianos or acoustic guitars.
Many definitions of singularity exist and though several of them have some bearing on and resonance in this work the principle ones with which Peter identifies here are the personal (unusual, strange) and gravitational (Black Hole). So...it's serious but it's not devoid of humour, though where this occurs it's often of a black variety...and often directed back at the singer himself.
After all, we are all circling just outside the gravitational pull of our personal black holes...that's where we're heading. Meanwhile, though, we can whistle a tune, albeit a strange and singular one.
Tracklisting:
1. Our Eyes Give It Shape
2. Event Horizon
3. Famous Last Words
4. Naked To The Flame
5. Meanwhile My Mother
6. Vainglorious Boy
7. Of Wire, Of Wood
8. Friday Afternoon
9. White Dot -
Sold outAfter the alarums and excursions of his appearances in the Van der Graaf Generator reunion of 2005 Peter Hammill's first release of 2006 on Fie! Records restates his interest in things stripped down, solo...and live.Visit product page →
Over the last decade or so the most common line-up for Peter's shows has been a duo, with Stuart Gordon's electric violin augmenting Peter's own vox, piano and guitar. Not before time, "Veracious" provides an audio document of the way in which these two have set about their business onstage.
A feature of Peter's shows has been a constant turnover of material and most of the songs represented here come from Peter's most recent studio albums; only "A Way Out" and "Primo on the Parapet" have appeared on live recordings before.
As always, the tunes and lyrics are stretched and warped away from their original shapes: that's the nature of real live performance. "Veracious" is an essential addition to the Peter's catalogue of live recordings.
Tracklisting:
1. A Better Time
2. Gone Ahead
3. Driven
4. Nothing Comes
5. Amnesiac
6. Nightman
7. Like Veronica
8. Bubble
9. Easy To Slip Away
10. Primo On The Parapet
11. Shingle Song
12. A Way Out -
Sold out'Incoherence' is Peter Hammill's twenty-sixth solo album of completely new sung material, the forty-ninth in which he has had principal involvement as writer, singer and musician, including those with Van der Graaf Generator, instrumental 'Sonix' and live projects.Visit product page →
Peter has been noted for his words (and his care with and for them) since the beginning of his thirty-six year long career; in this continuous 42 minute song cycle his lyrics examine instances of language failing to work or to communicate...the impossibilities of words, where meaning, logic and intention fall apart into incoherence.
The musical backdrop to the lyrics is kaleidoscopic, based on Peter's keyboards and guitars with significant contributions from his long-term cohorts Stuart Gordon (violin) and David Jackson (saxes and flutes). Percussion is completely absent. The arrangements move jaggedly from floating improvisations to full orchestrations to full-on riffs, reflecting the paradoxes, the dead ends, the cliff-hanging inconclusions of the lyrical content. All this is a long way from the Pop Song. It is just as far away from the Classical Conservatoire or the Jazz Club.
Something else, again. Like it or loathe it, what else do you expect from PH by now? Surprise? A Conclusion?
Peter finished the final mix on this project at 5pm on December 5th 2003; forty-two hours later he had a heart attack, from which he is currently recovering. The moving finger writes, wags, points...and moves on. All our stories are incoherent.
Tracklisting:
1. When Language Corrodes
2. Babel
3. Logodaedalus
4. Like Perfume
5. Your Word
6. Always And A Day
7. Cretans Always Lie
8. All Greek
9. Call That A Conversation?
10. The Meanings Changed
11. Converse
12. Gone Ahead
13. Power Of Speech
14. If Language Explodes -
Sold out"This is the forty-seventh album that I've recorded. As you'll know, there's always some difference in attitude, approach and style as I've gone from one to the next.Visit product page →
This time I've restricted myself to writing and playing exclusively on acoustic guitar. It was on this instrument that I began writing songs nearly forty years ago, so this meant something of a return to first principles. It was also a project of interesting and challenging discipline. I have not, though, made a simple acoustic record.
The guitars are layered and several and there are also outstanding sonic contributions from Stuart Gordon on violin and viola and David Jackson on sax and flute. I have bedded in backing vocals in places but in general the lead voice is centre stage.
The songs are at the serious end of the spectrum. No, this is not a folk album. " - Peter Hammill
Tracklisting:
1. We Are Written
2. Crossed Wires
3. Driven
4. Once You Called Me
5. The Ice Hotel
6. This Is The Fall
7. Just A Child
8. Skinny
9. Bareknuckle Trade -
Sold outPeter Hammill has been a writer, singer and performer for the last thirty years. For most of that time he has been firmly planted in the 'Art/Weird' box. For a brief period in the early eighties, though, he had a Beat Group, albeit a somewhat unlikely one...The K Group.Visit product page →
The rhythm section of Guy Evans (drums) and Nic Potter (bass) had, of course, played with Peter in Van der Graaf Generator. It should not be forgotten, however, that they were also members of Glenn Fernando Campbell's Misunderstood. Enough credentials? Lead guitarist was John Ellis, ex-Vibrators & Peter Gabriel. Peter had met him while both were performing with the Stranglers while Hugh Cornwell was in jail. Peter himself contributed his own brand of brutal rhythm guitar, piano & vox.
Taking material from Peter's solo career, from VdGG and from the two records which, under Peter's solo name, the combination recorded together (Enter k and Patience), the group toured consistently between '82 and '83. Clubs, mostly; Germany, mostly; high voltage, definitely. This release presents, on CD 1, the original 'The Margin,' as recorded live in the UK in '83, in a remastered form.
A second CD contains live-wire performances from '82 in brutal stereo intensity. The K Group could and did play in funny time signatures and at times with great sensitivity. The dominant aesthetics of the group, though, were blasting guitars, bass string blisters, shredded drum heads, oxygen debt, sweat. Here it is. Ladies & Gentlemen, the bar is open.
Tracklisting:
CD 1:
1. The Future Now
2. Porton Down
3. Stranger Still
4. Sign
5. The Jargon King
6. Empress's Clothes
7. The Sphinx In The Face
8. Labour Of Love
9. Sitting Targets
10. Patient
11. Flight
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CD 2:
1. The Second Hand
2. My Experience
3. Paradox Drive
4. Modern
5. Film Noir
6. The Great Experiment
7. Happy Hour
8. Central Hotel
9. Again
10. If I Could -
'Unsung' contains experimental instrumental work of an unpredictable and uncategorisable nature. Just around the corner from comparative order and logic chaos waits.... As the title implies, the absence of lyrics means that not even any clues are offered.Visit product page →
Peter Hammill himself explains as best he can: "This is effectively the third in an originally unconscious series initiated with 'Loops and Reels' and continued with 'Sonix.' It also bears relation to the work I did with Guy Evans on 'Spur of the Moment' and Roger Eno on 'The Appointed Hour.' I used to call this kind of stuff experimental, as if to differentiate it from the 'normal' world of song...but these days the song seems capable of being stretched in wider and wider ways and such a sub-definition seems arch at best.
"The pieces presented here, though, individually and collectively, went self-deterministic on me at a certain point and seemed to wilfully declare that they refused be made into songs as such, insisting that they were complete as pieces in their own right and as a set of recordings.
They are not 'for' anything (dance/visual), nor 'about' anything (in the absence of any narrative drive). They are not trying to fit into any given genre, nor trying to jam genres togethr in (cold) fusion. I've lived with them for some time now and it seems to me that they evoke some entirely other culture...and remain, therefore, defiantly unsung.
For me, these pieces collectively present an alternative aural landscape. If they are for the most part free-spirited and -willed they still conform to their own internal rules. All this comes from...well, somewhere else. I suppose that finally I don't care where it comes from, only how it ends up. In these cases, unsung." -
Sold outPeter Hammill had spent a considerable amount of time, energy and emotion revisiting and remastering a good portion of the Van der Graaf Generator catalog for The Box (a four disc VdGG retrospective you'll find below), and it had a definite impact on his latest release, "What, Now?"Visit product page →
"Exhilarating though this was it carried with it an element of emotional debt and a demand for self-examination. I determined that my own next release should be conventional (as in songs) rather than experimental and I therefore put to one side a collection of material I had been previously been working on and began assembling the "What?" of "Now." There are eight songs of varying length and style.
On three or four of them one finds, in various combinations, the members of the (erstwhile and maybe some day to be again) pHQ: Manny Elias, Stuart Gordon and David Jackson. This line-up remains one of which I'm very fond and which I believe has an extremely wide sonic palette. This is not, though, a revisitation of "X my heart," for the remainder of the tracks are fundamentally me playing alone.
This time my stabs at instruments are divided fairly evenly between guitars electric and acoustic, pianos/keyboards and bass. Of course, there's a lot of singing, both lead and backing vox/choral. Naturally, although there are elements of familiarity, it is not the same as what has gone before." - PH
Tracklisting:
1. Here Come The Talkies
2. Far-Flung (Across The Sky)
3. The American Girl
4. Wendy & The Lost Boy
5. Lunatic In Knots
6. Edge Of The Road
7. Fed To The Wolves
8. Enough -
Sold outThis is Peter Hammill's latest album, a collection of songs recorded between January 1999 and February 2000.Visit product page →
Most of the vocals and instruments are performed entirely by Peter with some contributions from percussionist Manny Elias, violinist Stuart Gordon with Peter's daughters, Holly and Beatrice, providing some soprano vocals.
Tracklisting:
1. Touch And Go
2. Naming The Rose
3. How Far I Fell
4. Somebody Bad Enough
5. Tango For One
6. Like Veronica
7. In A Bottle
8. Astart -
Sold outVisit product page →An extraordinary collaboration. Between one and two in the afternoon of 1st April 1999 Roger and Peter improvised in their respective studios. This CD is a combination of their recordings, in which coincidence and fate play charming parts. The music is continuous for the whole hour. While coming from such an extremely specific time frame the music itself has a timeless quality. Modern music with a (serious) smile on the face.
Roger first suggested the idea of a collaboration with no more concrete idea than the hope that something unexpected might emerge, well away from anything which either of them might produce as individuals. With this as a yardstick they agreed to plunge fully into the unknown by recording improvisations in their respective studios for exactly one hour between 1 and 2 pm on Thursday, April 1st 1999. There were no preconditions and no advanced plan. Five minutes before the off they agreed by oe'phone that they would start in D minor. Beyond that, all was open.The hope had been that, if they were lucky, they might come up with i) individual passages of (solo) worth; ii) some moments of synchronicity which could stand in their own right; iii) several germs-of-ideas which they could develop, adapt, overdub and treat. (Of course, April 1st being Fool's Day, there also remained the possibility that one or both of them could have spent the hour in complete silence....). When the two performances were put in synch together it was immediately obvious that something quite different had occurred.
Their mutual, time-locked, distance-distanced concentration had in fact produced not two separate, occasionally coincident performances but the one whole event which is the content of this CD: a most particular hour embedded in music. The music on the CD is continuous, of course. It has a certain smile, a certain sense of playfulness about it; but it is also quite serious. And what were you doing for that hour on that day?
Tracklisting:
1. Up
2. Are They
3. Your Heart
4. And Let This
5. Wise Men
6. So How
7. To Know
8. Fools
9. In
10. Where
11. To Tread
12. Fool Rush
13. Fear
14. Open
15. Never
16. Rush In
17. But
18. In Love
19. Angels
20. Fall -
Remastered version.Visit product page →
Tracklisting:
1. Frozen In Place (Fragment)
2. Unrehearsed
3. Stupid
4. Since The Kids
5. Nightman
6. Fallen (The City Of Night)
7. Unready (Fragment)
8. Always Is Next
9. Unsteady (Fragment)
10. The Light Continent -
Sold outThis is a brilliant new album by Peter Hammill.Visit product page →
It is an extremely engaging and very personal statement, almost as if he were whispering a message to you.
Tracklisting:
1. Everyone You Hold
2. Personality
3. Nothing Comes
4. From The Safe House
5. Phosphorescence
6. Falling Open
7. Bubble
8. Can Do
9. Tenderness -
Sold outThis is the official Fie! re-release of Van der Graaf Generator's very first album. It has been digitally remastered with two bonus tracks added.Visit product page →
Also Peter has added extensive liner notes to this 16 page booklet recounted the earliest days of Van der Graaf and events that led up to the recording of this landmark album.
Tracklisting:
1. Afterwards
2. Orthenthian St.
3. Running Back
4. Into A Game
5. Ferret & Featherbird
6. Aerosol Grey Machine
7. Black Smoke Yen
8. Aquarian
9. Giant Squid
10. Octopus
11. Necromancer -
Sold outGuy Evans was invited to do whatever he wanted for a concert at Union Chapel. He decided to do a duet performance with Peter Hammill. And in the process the two of them invited a number of their favorite musicians to join them.Visit product page →
The onstage result that evening of Nov. 3, 1996 was a round robin of solos, duets and ensembles with musicians coming and going. Suddenly at the climax of the evening the audience realized that the ensemble in front of their eyes just happened to be Van der Graaf Generator performing together for the first time in nearly 20 years!
But they did so in a typically sideways manner which had more to do with the (radical) logic of the moment than with fitting into any genre or raking in the lucre in some sad pastiche of their younger selves. Thankfully the evening was preserved on this official bootleg.
Tracklisting:
CD 1:
1. Introduction
2. Fireworks
3. A Forest Of Pronouns
4. Anatol's Proposal
5. After The Show
6. Roger And Out
7. Accidents
8. Four Kinds Of Rice/Hello/Resolution
9. Women Of Ireland
10. Ship Of Fools
CD 2:
1. Hamburg Station
2. Seven Wonders
3. Adagio For Strings
4. Red Shift
5. Lemmings
6. Outroduction
7. Traintime -
Remastered version.Visit product page →
Tracklisting:
1. A Better Time (Acapella)
2. Amnesiac
3. Ram Origami
4. A Forest Of Pronouns
5. Earthbound
6. Narcissus (Bar And Grill)
7. Material Possession
8. Come Clean
9. A Better Time -
Sold outRemastered version.Visit product page →
Tracklisting:
1. Sharply Unclear
2. The Gift Of Fire
3. You Can't Want What You Always Get...
4. A Headlong Stretch
5. Your Tall Ship
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