Peter Hammill

Peter Hammill has been at it for almost 40 years now, and yet, since the early 2000s, he has been on a new way up, creatively speaking. Clutch (2002) and Incoherence (2004), his previous two studio albums, had both hit high artistic marks, but that is only one of the main reasons why Singularity was so highly anticipated by the fans. It was also the Thin Man's first studio album since remastering his '70s LPs for EMI, his first since the re-formation of his old group, Van der Graaf Generator. Yet, most importantly, especially for a man of words like he is, it was his first studio release since his heart attack two years earlier. Were all the expectations generated by these "firsts" met? Surprisingly, yes. Singularity stands among Hammill's best albums of the past 25 years.

‘In a Foreign Town / Out of Water 2023’ is a new project by Peter Hammill. which features new reworkings of two of Peter’s landmark albums originally released in 1988 and 1990 respectively.

For the first time ever, Peter has recorded a collection of cover versions. The songs come from a variety of musical worlds: Classical, American Songbook, Italian Pop and Tango. In all but three cases Peter has also translated the songs, from Italian, French and German. As strange a project as this might seem, there’s an overall sense of cohesiveness to it and it’s absolutely of this time. Two songs have lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein; the music for one is by Jerome Kern, the other by Richard Rodgers. Leiber and Stoller provided lyrics for “I who have nothing’, originally an Italian tune. Three Italian songs are at the core of the album, written (and originally performed) by Fabrizio de Andre, Luigi Tenco and Piero Ciampi. The two tango pieces were composed by Astor Piazzolla. Finally, there are two classical songs, respectively by Faure and Mahler.

All That Might Have Been, issued in the same year as Other World, is Peter Hammill's excellent duet offering with guitarist Gary Lucas, and it's among the most intellectually challenging, conceptually sprawling, and musically satisfying offerings in his career. Given its heft, it is more than likely that this is a record he couldn't have made when he was younger. It is the work of a master in full control of his vision. Described by Hammill as "cinematic by design," it features 21 tracks which were deliberately edited to be incomplete. Taken together they create a conscious narrative; its scenes are sonic episodes that move backwards and forwards just as an actual film would. This is not the same thing as creating a soundtrack without a movie, this is both: a soundtrack and an aural movie. Hammill wrote and recorded the songs in full, then slashed them apart, and stitched the story together from the fragments…

Comprised of instrumental experimental bits and pieces from previous projects, labeled as the "Hybrid Experiments 1994-1996", Sonix represents the existential exosphere of Peter Hammill's fascination with sound, created within a vacuum of time and space…

Deluxe three disc (two CDs + DVD) edition of this live release from the Van Der Graaf Generator leader containing the Berlin 1992 concert on two CDs plus a DVD featuring the very same performance…

The apparently impenetrable sprawl of Peter Hammill's back catalog is one of the most challenging propositions facing any novice entrant to his world, near-annual albums ranging across so many musical shades and shadows that, as soon as you think you've got a handle on his direction, he immediately sweeps off somewhere else…