FIE Records
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Sold out"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 -
Peter's first solo album for three years is an intimate affair.Visit product page →
The songs are for the most part based on single piano, guitar and vocal parts, designed for live performance. (Indeed, many of these songs have already been performed on stage.)
Overdubbing is textural - no percussion, supportive guitars, a central spine of bass, synth and string washes; many extra voices - backing, harmony, choral - behind the main one.
The characters who pave their fretful way through these songs are in general facing up to or edging in towards twilight. What's coming to them are moments of realisation rather than resignation. In the third act of life it's time to look with a clear eye at where one's been, at where one's going.
Tracklisting:
1. My Unintended
2. Reputation
3. Charm Alone
4. What Lies Ahead
5. Anagnorisis
6. Torpor
7. Milked
8. Girl to the North Country
9. On Deaf Ears
10. The Descent -
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 -
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 -
'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." -
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
