Grundzã¼ge Der Kolloidwissenschaft

Beginning as a Peter Hammill solo effort following the dissolution of the first Van Der Graaf Generator, this quickly recorded album brought Hammill together with producer John Anthony and caused the reformation of the band (which immediately thereafter shifted personnel once again). A raw, energetic effort that sometimes did little to show off the young Hammill's talents, the album nevertheless has some fine moments that hint at the possibilities for future releases…

Released in the latter half of 1976 as a half-hearted attempt at some sort of commercial focus in the U.K. and U.S., World Record suffers from several ailments: there was much tension in the band at this point, particularly between leader Peter Hammill and keyboardist Hugh Banton. In the end, the band would split apart, with Banton and wind player David Jackson leaving, while Hammill and drummer Guy Evans recruited replacements…

Somehow this combination made sense: a revised band (with Nic Potter returning on bass and the addition of Graham Smith, formerly of String Driven Thing, on violin) with a shortened name, and an album that was named twice, with different cover art for each name…

The sad fact about box sets is that there's always a fan out there who thinks they could have compiled a better one. An even sadder fact is that they're often correct, and the very notion of anthologizing Van Der Graaf Generator was a fraught one for that very reason. More, perhaps, than any other band of the early-'70s prog era, VDGG polarized their fans as much as the band's blatantly inhospitable sound outraged outsiders. They cut just eight studio albums, and all eight possess a wholly different character, all the more so since the band actually broke up midway through the sequence…