'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.
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."
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