Sound Generator

"Alt" is a 2012 studio project by the legendary Van Der Graaf Generator and follows on from the release of "A Grounding In Numbers” in 2011. "Alt” is no ordinary Van Der Graaf Generator album (if the term "ordinary” could ever be applied to this visionary group). Peter Hammill explains: "Instrumental Improvs & Experiments - Most of the music on "Alt” was made while we weren't really looking, or perhaps only while the left side of our collective brain was engaged. The album is a mixture of improvisations recorded at sound checks and in the studio and more considered sonic creations which often verge on Musique Concrete. The fourteen pieces here offer a fascinating glimpse into an alternative Van der Graaf Generator sound world. Perhaps the closest comparison would be with the second CD of "Present", but even the link with those recordings is tenuous. Even by Van der Graaf Generator standards, this stuff's at the wacky end of the scale!” This instrumental album is another side of Van Der Graaf Generator, a truly unique listening experience.

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…