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Van der Graaf Generator: ALT

 A l b u m   D e t a i l s


Label: Esoteric Records
Released: 2012.06.25
Time:
 61:01
Category: Progressive Rock
Producer(s): Peter Hammill
Rating:
Media type: CD
Web address: www.vandergraafgenerator.co.uk
Appears with: Peter Hammill
Purchase date: 2012
Price in €: 1,00





 S o n g s ,   T r a c k s


[1] Earlybird (H.Banton/G.Evans/P.Hammill) - 4:01
[2] Extractus (H.Banton/G.Evans/P.Hammill) - 1:39
[3] Sackbutt (H.Banton/G.Evans/P.Hammill) - 1:54
[4] Colossus (H.Banton/G.Evans/P.Hammill) - 6:33
[5] Batty Loop (H.Banton/G.Evans/P.Hammill) - 1:11
[6] Splendid (H.Banton/G.Evans/P.Hammill) - 3:46
[7] Repeat After Me (H.Banton/G.Evans/P.Hammill) - 7:37
[8] Elsewhere (H.Banton/G.Evans/P.Hammill) - 4:17
[9] Here's One I Made Earlier (H.Banton/G.Evans/P.Hammill) - 5:41
[10] Midnite Or So (H.Banton/G.Evans/P.Hammill) - 3:32
[11] D'Accord (H.Banton/G.Evans/P.Hammill) - 2:25
[12] Mackarel Ate Them (H.Banton/G.Evans/P.Hammill) - 4:47
[13] Tuesday, The Riff (H.Banton/G.Evans/P.Hammill) - 2:42
[14] Dronus (H.Banton/G.Evans/P.Hammill) - 10:37

 A r t i s t s ,   P e r s o n n e l


Peter Hammill - Guitars, Keyboards
Hugh Banton - Organ, Bass, Bass Pedals
Guy Evans - Drums

Paul Ridout - Design, Photography

 C o m m e n t s ,   N o t e s


Recorded and mixed 2006-2012 on location and at: The Gaia Centre, Delabole, Kernow; Terra Incognita; The Organ Workshop; Over the Hill.



"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 whacky end of the scale!"

This instrumental album is another side of Van Der Graaf Generator, a truly unique listening experience.

www.vandergraafgenerator.co.uk



THE NEW PROJECT FROM VAN DER GRAAF GENERATOR Esoteric Recordings are pleased to announce the latest release on their frontline label, ESOTERIC ANTENNA, dedicated to new releases by both new acts and established artists. ALT is a new 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.

Amazon.co.uk



If you're curious about the career of legendary British prog rockers Van der Graaf Generator and are looking for a gateway album to enter the band's rarified realm, don't pick this one. As the title archly implies, Alt has little in common with anything else in Van der Graaf's extensive discography. For one thing, it's the only all-instrumental album in the catalog of a band famous for frontman Peter Hammill's voice and lyrics, and even the instrumental sections of previous Van der Graaf albums are distant kin at best. If, however, you are a hardcore fan who wants to follow the band's mercurial muse into uncharted territory, then you occupy the micro-niche of open-minded VDGG enthusiasts for whom Alt was intended. After re-forming in 2005, Van der Graaf turned out three albums that seemed to be the next natural step from where they'd left off in the ‘70s, but following those with Alt is clearly a warning not to take the group's direction for granted. While Van der Graaf's compositional métier has always been a particularly intense band of prog, tightly structured and full of complex, carefully executed twists and turns, Alt is a much less linear affair. Apparently, most of the pieces came out of group improv sessions that were artfully tweaked afterwards. The inside photo of all three bandmembers bent purposefully over a computer suggests what the latter half of the process was like. Alt is filled with abstract sound paintings - shadowy, evanescent affairs where keyboards and percussion slither in and out of the foreground like scurrilous rumors. If you took the hazy reflection of the dark moods mined in many Van der Graaf songs and manipulated that image into an entirely new context, you'd have something like the tracks on Alt, snapshots of a band that obviously abhors standing still.

James Allen - All Music Guide



“Even by VDGG standards, this stuff’s at the wacky end of the scale.” So says leader Peter Hammill as an immediate warning for the casual purchaser (as if there’s such a thing as a casual VDGG purchaser).

This is just the sort of curate’s egg that makes Van Der Graaf Generator the great, singular group that they are. Alt is a patchwork of sketches of material the group worked through in rehearsal; or, as Hammill puts it, “Music made while we weren’t really looking.” Here be improvisations, fragments; ideas hit upon and then quickly abandoned, all while the tape was rolling, in the style of the second disc of their 2005 comeback album Present.

It really is one for diehards only, yet that doesn’t mean it’s throwaway. Extractus has all the potential for being buried in an old VDGG 20-minute work-out; Sackbutt sounds vaguely medieval. Hugh Banton’s organ stabs away in Colossus before it goes on a lengthy crash-bang-wallop with drummer Guy Evans into overdrive. Batty Loop demonstrates what can be achieved while tarrying a while at the interface of jazz and heavy metal. Most successful is the ambience of the grand piano and acoustic guitar on Repeat After Me, and Midnite Or So, which lapses into John Barry’s Midnight Cowboy theme. Moderately exhilarating and never less than interesting.

Daryl Easlea
© 2015 Diamond Publishing



Few people would expect a Van der Graaf Generator album so soon after last year’s career highlight, A Grounding in Numbers. Even fewer would expect a VdGG album with no lyrical or vocal input from Peter Hammill. No, Hammill did not quit the band – this is just VdGG changing up their game again. ALT is the realization of what many fans have long thought the band capable of, based on teasing snippets recorded at various points throughout their career: a wild, careening, album’s worth of “songs,” soundscapes, and improvisations.

The album opens with “Earlybird,” a pleasant matching of Evans’s percussion and Hammill/Banton-produced birdcalls. The sonics here are so rich and enveloping that a listener might feel as if an airlock has sealed behind them. Sudden barometric change: strange humidity. The world of the “alt” Van der Graaf Generator beckons.

The rest of the tracks range from blips that pass by in under sixty seconds to a few elongated pieces that push the ten-minute mark. Within these recordings, it is fun and satisfying, to a degree, to enter into the “who played what?” game.  (The VdGG/Peter Hammill fan might remember a rather obscure album by Peter Hammill and Guy Evans titled Spur of the Moment, released in 1989, on which both musicians made use of the same sampled sounds, so it was often impossible to tell whether it was Hammill or Evans on “drums” or “keyboard.” A similar effect is produced on ALT. In fact, one of the tracks on ALT, “Repeat After Me,”  would not sound at all out of place on that album.) While there are some passages where it is obvious which band member is performing on which instrument, particularly in Evans’s case, the experience of listening to ALTis heightened when one stops trying to distinguish between the contributions of the members and take in the music as a production of a singular entity.

There are internal and external reference points throughout the album. The second track, “Extractus,” features Hammill’s inimitable confident yet tentative style of guitar playing that sounds as if he’s still trying to find his way out of the 1976 epic “Meurglys III, the Songwriter’s Guild,” with sympathetic organ accompaniment from Banton, and incongruously bright and martial drum rolls from Evans. Things get weirder from there, perhaps no more so than the third track, “Colossus,” which assaults the senses like the soundtrack to a 3D-surround film of an astral rollercoaster ride.  It also features a lot of faux-brass and woodwind sounds – an homage to their former bandmate, saxophonist/flautist David Jackson, who left the band almost as soon as it reformed in 2005? Or a conciliatory gesture to fans? Perhaps even a display of bitterly ironic musical commentary. “Midnite or So” is a tribute to, and a reworking of, the Thelonious Monk classic “Round Midnight.”

As Hammill says in the press release, the closest thing to the music here is the second disc of their 2005 album, Present. But that really doesn’t even come close, as  disc 2 of Present is a series of improvisational pieces firmly grounded in the guitar/keyboard, organ, drums, and brass/woodwind lineup, whereas ALT is comprised of all manner of sounds from a much wider, alien, even, palette.

ALT is another side of a band that is already way out in left field in terms of its approach to songwriting and performing. If you’re looking for a VdGG album packed with riffs, odd time signatures, and the poetic and portentous lyrics and vocals of Peter Hammill, you’ll need to wait for the next one, or revisit the back catalog. This is Van der Graaf Generator reveling in a world that is strange even to them.

Dan Coffey - June 20, 2012
avantmusicnews.com



Hmmm… a Van der Graaf Generator instrumental album eh? For a supposed ‘prog’ band, Van der Graaf Generator have never really gone in for lengthy instrumental passages, preferring to fill their convoluted songs with Peter Hammill’s densely-packed words. Then again, The Graaf, as they’ve seldom affectionately referred to, have never really gone in for the usual ‘prog’ behaviour.

Of course their biggest ‘hit’ “Theme One” was an instrumental, but that was a cover of a George Martin piece, so hardly counts, and the less said about the lacklustre Long Hello series the better, except to be grateful they weren’t released under the group name to tarnish the reputation. 2005’s triumphant reunion album Present came with a second disc of improvised instrumentals, a disc that tended to remain firmly in the case while disc one dominated the CD player. The two instrumentals on last year’s A Grounding in Numbers, while good, hardly made everyone clamour to suggest that Hammill keeps his mouth shut in future. Certainly Banton and Evans are extraordinary musicians, but both have a great aptitude for playing exactly what’s needed rather than dazzling us with party tricks, and what’s needed is almost always the perfect setting for their crazed front man’s unhinged rantings.

So… not a lot of bated breath expended on waiting for Alt –  a series of instrumental pieces recorded at various rehearsals and soundchecks over the past few years, particularly when drummer Guy Evans describes some of them as being “execrably recorded”. But… against all odds, it’s rather good, catching the trio having fun and trying things that would be off-limits on a regular VdGG album. Most noticeably, organist (NOT keyboard player!) Hugh Banton actually selects the orchestral patch on his instrument on “Colossus,” apparently to isolate a fault rather than out of choice but then takes off into Varèse territory when Guy Evans thunders in with some freeform percussion, resulting in six and a half minutes of psychotic atonal orchestration.

Elsewhere, both “Here’s One I Made Earlier” and “Dronus” could pass as lost krautrock pieces, e-bow guitar and cosmic organ melding into huge floating clouds of toxic mist on a far away planet like something from Tangerine Dream’s Zeit, or in the latter’s case, maybe even something from one of Popol Vuh’s Herzog soundtracks. Of course with a project like this it’s going to be a bit hit or miss, and both “Elsewhere” and “Midnite or So” sound a bit jokey and throwaway with bits of lounge jazz pastiche popping up, and “Repeat After Me” is a bit, well, nice. Even these pieces have their moments though, and it certainly sounds like the guys are having great fun.

Just about the only sound absent from Alt is the sound of progressive rock musicians showing you how well they can play
“Extractus” sounds like the formative idea for an interesting song riff, as does “Tuesday, the Riff,” the latter almost approaching Southern Lord territory, although presumably such potential songs have already been discarded for these snatches to turn up here. Opening track “Earlybird” on the other hand appears to be Guy Evans improvising along to a bird singing outside the window.

Just about the only sound absent from Alt is the sound of progressive rock musicians showing you how well they can play. For that alone, it comes pretty highly recommended. It’s genuinely refreshing to hear three sexagenarians still reaching out for new and stimulating sounds rather than falling back on old habits like the majority of their contemporaries. Alt will disappoint those looking for a Van der Graaf Generator album a bit like the others, but to those fans who appreciate the spirit rather than technique of the group, it should prove a positive delight… and probably something of a surprise.

Alan Holmes
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