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Peter Hammill: Incoherence

 A l b u m   D e t a i l s


Label: Fie! Records
Released: 2004
Time:
 41:39
Category: Progressive Rock
Producer(s): Peter Hammill
Rating:
Media type: CD
Web address: www.sofasound.com
Appears with: Van der Graaf Generator, David Jackson
Purchase date: 2009.10.19
Price in €: 3,00





 S o n g s ,   T r a c k s


[1] When Langauge Corrodes (P.Hammill) - 2:46
[2] Babel (P.Hammill) - 4:36
[3] Logodaedalus (P.Hammill) - 2:18
[4] Like Perfume (P.Hammill) - 1:32
[5] Your Word (P.Hammill) - 1:09
[6] Always and a Day (P.Hammill) - 2:08
[7] Cretans Always Lie (P.Hammill) - 3:25
[8] All Greek (P.Hammill) - 4:14
[9] Call That a Conversation? (P.Hammill) - 3:13
[10] The Meanings Changed (P.Hammill) - 1:57
[11] Converse (P.Hammill) - 2:09
[12] Gone Ahead (P.Hammill) - 5:39
[13] Power of Speech (P.Hammill) - 2:41
[14] If Langauge Explodes (P.Hammill) - 3:46

 A r t i s t s ,   P e r s o n n e l


Peter Hammill - Acoustic & Electric Guitar, Piano, Keyboards, Vocals, Engineer, Producer

Nic Potter - Bass
Stuart Gordon - Violin
David Jackson - Soprano & Alto Saxophone, Flute

 C o m m e n t s ,   N o t e s


2004 CD Fie! 9129

Recorded and Nixed at Terra Incognita, Somerset, March-December 2003.



Incoherence is an album by Peter Hammill, released on his Fie! label in March 2004. Incoherence is a concept album about language, containing 14 tracks with soft transitions between them. The album was produced and played by Hammill himself, with contributions from Stuart Gordon on violin and David Jackson on flute and saxes. Incoherence is recognized by critics as ambitious and one of Hammill's major works.

Incoherence is Hammill's fourth (either with Van der Graaf Generator or solo) long piece of music with continuous transitions between sections which can be identified as single songs. At 41 minutes, however, it is twice as long as the earlier examples, "A Plague of Lighthouse-Keepers" (1971 with Van der Graaf Generator), "Flight" (1980) and "A Headlong Stretch" (1994). Musically, the 14 sections vary widely from calm, harmonic songs to difficult and highly demanding sections, tied together by Hammill’s unusual voice, a focus on keyboards and the concept of the album: language. Incoherence was produced in Hammill's studio Terra Incognita in Wiltshire between March and September 2003. Hammill completed the mixing of the album just two days before he suffered a heart attack in December, 2003. The instrumentation of Incoherence is complex and symphonic, but never overdone and leaving some rather simple musical structures, mainly in the beginning and the end. Beneath keyboards in classical as well as in processed forms, Hammill used guitars, backing vocals and some overdubs by the violins of Stuart Gordon and the saxophones of David Jackson. This kind of instrumentation was Hammill’s main form of producing since the 1990s, but this time with an even higher level of complexity and without the use of drums.

In Incoherence Hammill discusses the contradictions and shortcomings of language, given that "our capacities for communication and comprehension define us both socially and personally". In multi-levelled ways the words of this album describe the "incoherent" use and the impossibilities of words. It has been argued that Peter Hammill referenced the infamous Iraq speech of Tony Blair.

The cover, designed by Paul Ridout, shows corroded and burnt surfaces with lines of text. Folded out, the booklet contains a tower built with the lines of the songs of Incoherence, a reference to the Tower of Babel.

Critics received Incoherence favourably, speaking of a "major work, challenging pop's conventional limits yet again" (The Independent)[1], being "Hammill's most ambitious undertaking since 'Flight', and representing a high mark in the man's artistic creativity" (Allmusic)[2]. However, it was pointed out that Incoherence "demands absorption throughout time and repeated listens" (Maelstrom).

Wikipedia



Unlike anything else Peter Hammill has done before, Incoherence seems to counterbalance the relative simplicity of his previous studio outing, Clutch. A multi-tracked keyboard extravaganza, Incoherence consists of a single 42-minute suite in 14 movements. There are separate songs, but they are segued in ways that make the transitions unnoticeable, especially on first listen. That alone is enough to set the album apart from its neighbors in Hammill's discography, but there is more: a renewed urge to experiment with forms and textures within the song format; a rare level of richness and complexity in the arrangements; and the overarching concept of incoherence, language, and miscommunication that ties all 14 songs into a single, highly convincing whole. Several listeners will have a harder time getting into this album, as it demands some focused listening and requires assessment as a complete work, instead of being absorbed song by song. Some of the keyboard sounds are rather trite, but Hammill's multi-keyboard arrangements are a step or two ahead of his usual self, with some sections sounding surprisingly close to some of Peter Gabriel's work. Hammill also plays acoustic and electric guitars, although keyboards remain the main focus. Stuart Gordon adds violin in several sections, and Van der Graaf Generator alumnus David Jackson contributes saxes and flutes. Highlights include "Babel," the electronic-sounding "Cretans Always Lie," and the poignant ballad "Gone Ahead," which has become a live favorite (see Veracious). Even though Incoherence is a suite, not an epic track, it still feels like Hammill's most ambitious undertaking since "Flight." It also represents a high mark in the man's artistic creativity.

François Couture - All-Music Guide
  

 L y r i c s


When Language Corrodes

And when language corrodes
all our faculties falter and blur.
Nobody knows how our tongues got so swollen and furred.
What truths are there left to be told
when we're all lost for words?
        

Babel

Words upon words
stack the tower of Babel
brick on brick on straw on clay
but a whispering stirs
and the structure's unstable
when all the scaffold's stripped away.
We're ever quick to aver
that we are ready and able
but we can't say what's coming, come what may.
        
By definition self-obsessed
we strive to make ourselves plain
with words that pass the acid test
with passive thought in train.
        
Words upon words,
fiction, folly and fable,
each pregnant pause a dead giveaway...
ploughing on undeterred
as the sell-bys expire on our labels
though at length we'll have little or nothing to say
it would be too absurd
to spend life all agaze at our navels -
oh, we've got such limited time to go on and explain.
        
So, running off at the mouth,
we all get carried away
uncertain when it all goes south
if we mean what we say.
        
If we mean what we say....

Logodaedalus

Logorrhea
independent of the brain
not a moment to reflect
only time to wick up the gain
what was he thinking of and
why did he dream he could convey a bright idea?
While his tongue was wagging
he forgot to use the space between his ears.
        
Logodaedalus
with the cunning of a fox
paint him devious
in the corner of the room,
pop Pandora out of her box.
What is he on about and
why are his arguments so needlessly arcane
in their brilliance?
He's close to appearing more than slightly inane
with his crooked logic
and his dog-eared dictionary close to hand....
I don't think he's got it
but he's insistent that we're going to understand
his complete precision;
in the end he's certain that we'll all agree
with his definition...
an obsolescent word from 1663.
        
That says it all for me.


Like perfume

Once spoken,
words perfume the air
like woodsmoke, like a breath of self that's no longer there.
Such confidence,
such half-baked truth...
the sound of distant voices mocks the hubris of youth.


Your word

Burnt the bridges, burnt the tread;
the sodden syllables are turned.
You can't take back what you said
when you give your word.


Always and a day

Always and a day
we swore in common vow
that tomorrow we would stay
the same as now,
the same as now.
        
In every future verb
we deny our own "Until";
this the promise that we serve -
we have time to kill:
I will, I will,
I will, I will,
I will, I will
        
always and a day.


Cretans always lie

It's impossible to trace
these words in carbon paper trail       
for just as Zeno's arrow flies the snake is eating its tail.
        
And in contradictory style
the soldier and the steer attend
around the mark of the five hundred all in charge of a friend.
        
"The Cretans always lie"
claims the Cretan.
The Cretans always lie.
        
A kiss the gift from hell
light, the poison pillow, dear...
and as we gag on it translation smacks of something like
        
"Cretans always lie"
claims the Cretan;
"Of Cretan stock am I,
am I Cretan?"
        
Why don't we hook this old short circuit to the value of Pi?
        
"Cretans always lie"
claims the Cretan;
"Of Cretan stock am I,
(so) am I Cretan?"
And Zeno's arrow flies,
through the ether.
        
Come on...let's see how the paradox flies.


All Greek

Fried up the brain
with rhetorical questions
dictionary games
and conundrums ear to ear.
When we say what we think
do we think what we're saying's
missing a link,
inconsistent in idea?
        
 (in internal stage whispers
 wordless the script
 getting lost in contradictory talk....)
        
Losing the thread
        (in a set of stage whispers)
"It's nothing"... (he said)
If I meant that it would say it all.
(Spoken, the lines are misshapen....)
speaking my mind
but the mind that thinks out loud's not thinking straight at all.
        
All my ideas formed entirely without words
speechlessly, you get the picture?
        
ne, oxi, oxi, endax'
hai, iie, iie, redact....
        
All greek to me, all in double dutch phrases,
cacophony of linguistic dismay,
orotund talk and the sound of my voice is
fractured and forced;
I can't get out what I mean to say,
parroted lines all misshapen...
speaking my mind
but the mind that thinks out loud is close to blown away.
        
And when ideas come entirely without words
their purity is unalloyed
even to ourselves unspoken is unheard
and so we try to give them voice
but languages have all evolved to meet the needs
of every individual culture
so with every syntax that we press them to we see
their essences adulterated...
        
ne, oxi, oxi, endax'
hai, iie, iie, redact....


Call that a Conversation?

Oh, spit it out, there's no way we'll see eye to eye -
my simple truth is your warped confusion;
as off different planets we spin eccentric jive.
        
I don't remember what I said
I don't think you do either.
        
Slippery of  tongue though you claim my speech may be
all of the words you've been putting in my mouth just flatter to deceive.
        
I never said the half of that
you're utterly mistaken
call that a conversation?
        
Yeah, you said it,
all my meaning, quite misread it...
this conversation let's forget it now.
        
I can't believe what you just said
call this a conversation?
        
Let's call it quits,
let's just say it's
a measure of the distance between our worlds.
        
I don't remember what I said,
I don't think you do either;
you make what you will of meaning -
call that a conversation?
        
More likely just the space between words
when the meanings have all changed.


The Meanings Changed

From the first word that I said to the last
some strange echo remains
imprinted in the walls
recorded in the vaults
we talked and tunneled through
but the meanings have all changed.
        
Because of all I said
you began to regard me as strange
until with some relief
you suspended disbelief
I tried to tell the truth
but my meaning was all changed .
        
I saved one final word
to pay off this long sentence in spades
but what I thought I said
was patently misread.
The spoken word
is broken here
and in between the two of us
the meaning is all changed.
(Gone ahead)
We bite off our tongues
while chewing the fat;
though the fire in our lungs is celestial
our delivery falls flat.
Would a time come to be silent?
Oh, we never spoke of that.
        
We talked out of turn
in the school of hard knocks;
although willing to learn from experience
it still comes as a shock
when the time comes to be silent...
one by one the jaws all drop.
        
The voice is still clear in my head;
it's the last word in monologue....
close-up, interior, night.
        
mmm...
        
The voices alive in my head
are all tongue-tied to silence now.
        
It's the darkest of moods,
it's the cruellest of jokes
that this facility I used, once so fluent,
is cut out at a stroke.
And the time came to be silent
as the core connection broke....
absurd ineloquence,
my own words on which I choke.
        
Swallowing deep on the thread,
so much I'm losing now,
so many things left unsaid
and the voice I've been using is
gone ahead.
(Power of Speech)
Always we shout to be heard
as though our voices could express
the sense of sentences deferred
and of lessons learned,
of storylines unfolding,
of the truths of our innocence and shame,
of life, the very breath that we are holding,
of our very names.
We shoot our mouths off in adventure,
we ram the ammunition in the breach,
blow up the flowering of sense
with the power of speech.
(If Language Explodes)
And if language explodes
in our faces like shrapnel
all self-defence is blown away.
        
In the end this reasoning's sound:
how can we be found
if we're lost for words?
        
Oh, still in the search for tthewords....
        
I've said my piece,
I'll take my leave now,
breathe not a word
of my disarray.
        
Ssh.
        
All of the words have flown away....


 M P 3   S a m p l e s


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