Contenido de esta entrada:
Enlaces, letras y opinión personal
Anterior entrada de Peter Hammill: 1974: Peter Hammill en el rincón silencioso y el escenario vacío
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| Portada del álbum In Camera |
Enlaces interesantes sobre Peter Hammill y Van der Graaf Generator:
En un anterior artículo comentamos el cuarto álbum de Van der Graaf Generator, Pawn Hearts, (1971: Corazones de peón con Van der Graaf Generator).
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| Portada del álbum Pawn Heart |
Tras la publicación del álbum las giras regulares por Europa siguieron durante los siguientes cuatro meses, pero la tensión de la carga de trabajo se volvió demasiado para la banda, y se separaron en agosto de 1972.
En un anterior artículo comentamos los inicios de Peter Hammill y su primer álbum en solitario, Fool's Mate : 1971: El jaque mate de Peter Hammill.
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| Portada del álbum Fool's Mate |
Su arte fue caracterizado siempre por un gran espíritu de innovación y eclecticismo que ha servido como referencia de grandes bandas progresivas de la época. La poesía de Hammill, a veces oscura y excesivamente misteriosa, le ha valido críticas no siempre benévolas desde los medios y publicaciones especializadas, lo cual poco pareció importarle.
Su carrera como músico solista presenta un difuso límite entre sus creaciones personales y aquellas desarrolladas desde el grupo Van der Graaf Generator, pues su estilo inconfundible se hace presente tanto en uno como en otro ámbito, inclusive compartiendo frecuentemente sesiones de grabación con varios de los músicos integrantes de la banda. En general, el trabajo en solitario de Hammill se ocupa temáticamente de asuntos más personales, mientras que las canciones de la banda tratan temas más amplios.
Cuando Van der Graaf Generator se separó de nuevo en agosto de 1972, Hammill reanudó su carrera en solitario. Las canciones que estaban destinadas a Van der Graaf Generator ahora terminarán en sus álbumes en solitario. Los álbumes en solitario de Hammill de este período cuentan con la actuación de otros ex miembros de Van der Graaf Generator.
En un anterior artículo comentamos su segundo álbum en solitario Chameleon in the Shadow of the Night publicado en 1973: 1973: El camaleón en la sombra de la noche con Peter Hammill
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| Portada del álbum Chameleon in the Shadow of the Night. |
En un anterior artículo comentamos su tercer álbum, The Silent Corner and The Empty Stage, publicado en 1974: 1974: Peter Hammill en el rincón silencioso y el escenario vacío.
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| Portada del tercer álbum de Peter Hammill |
En este artículo nos ocupamos de su cuarto álbum en solitario titulado In Camera que fue publicado en julio de 1974.
Grabación del álbum
El álbum fue producido por él mismo. Gran parte del material fue grabado en su estudio casero, Sofa Sound (Sussex) utilizando una mesa de mezcla de cuatro pistas. . Luego llevó las cintas a los Trident Studios de Londres para la mezcla final y donde se agregaron elementos adicionales como la batería de su colega de Van der Graaf Generator, Guy Evans, y capas de sintetizador analógico ARP 2600.
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| Sintetizador ARP 2600 |
El álbum además de Guy Evans cuenta con la participación del ex-miembro de VdGG, Judge Smith. que dejó la banda en 1968.
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| Chris Judge Smith |
El álbum tiene una sensación predominantemente oscura, gótica y claustrofóbica, con las letras mezcladas con imágenes apocalípticas, religiosas y existenciales. "Gog" es una canción particularmente intensa y demoníaca, con (incluso para los estándares de Hammill) voces estridentes y agresivas, acordes de armonio grandiosos y una batería poderosa. Esta se convierte en "Magog", que es prácticamente una pieza de música concreta de drones siniestros, ruidos de percusión e incluye una voz hablada modulada por anillo. Canciones como "Ferret and Featherbird" y "Again" son ofertas más suaves, y Hammill se refiere a la primera como "algo que se acerca a una canción 'dulce'". El álbum fue dedicado al hermano de Hammill, Andrew.
"Again" fue reelaborada para el álbum de Hammill de 1984 The Love Songs.
Lanzamiento del álbum
El álbum fue lanzado en julio de 1974 con Charisma Records. En Estados Unidos no se publicó.
La fotografías de la portada y contraportada fueron tomadas por Mike Van der Vord.
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| Contraportada del álbum |
La funda interior del disco muestra fotografías diseñadas por O.D.
La portada muestra el logotipo personal de Hammill que representa el símbolo astrológico de Escorpio y que aparecería en las portadas de muchos lanzamientos venideros.
Reediciones
En 2006 fue publicado en forma remasterizada por EMI Virgin Records, complementado con tres bonus tracks correspondientes a una sesión en el programa de John Peel de la BBC grabada el 19 de agosto de 1974 y retrasmitida el 3 de septiembre de 1974.
Recepción
La prensa musical del Reino Unido fue generalmente muy positiva sobre el álbum.
Con la excepción de la pista final ("Magog"), este es un muy buen ejemplo de los primeros trabajos en solitario de Hammill, hábilmente asistido por el inquietante saxo de David Jackson. "Tapeworm" es un tema rockero y poderoso, mientras que "Again" es una canción de amor evocadora y triste. "Magog" es una sucesión de sonidos bizarros, con eco, oscuros, totalmente no representativos de la obra de Hammill, probablemente grabados con una buena pizca de humor y lengua empujada firmemente en la mejilla.Ali Sinclair en AllMusic
Enlaces, letras y opinión personal
Enlace al álbum completo:
Enlace a la lista de reproducción del álbum: Peter Hammill - In Camera
Lista de canciones
Cara 1
1. "Ferret and Featherbird" 3:43
2. "(No More) the Sub-mariner" 5:47
3. "Tapeworm" 4:20
4. "Again" 3:44
5. "Faint-Heart and the Sermon" 6:42
Cara 2
6. "The Comet, the Course, the Tail" 6:00
7. "Gog" 7:40
8. "Magog (in Bromine Chambers)" 9:41
CARA A
A1 Ferret And Featherbird
Enlaces
Letras
[Verse 1]
Time has come between us:
In the passing months I've felt you slip away
As your words and mine came like nursery rhymes
Till there was nothing left to say
[Verse 2]
Distance came between us long ago
As our memories faded away...
Over the miles I ceased to smile
Because nothing felt the same
[Bridge]
That's how it seemed a week ago
Far off in time and space
[Verse 3]
Time and distance are between us now
They form a bond to make things sure
Nothing ever shatters
You know what happens:
Time and distance make a love secure
A2 (No More) The Sub-Mariner
Enlaces
Letras
[Verse 1]
In my youth, I played at trains:
Now all steam is gone
In my dreams, brief shelter from the rain
I try to catch the fireglow....
With Dinky Toys, I thought that I was Stirling
With cricket bat, I saw myself as Peter May;
Oh! Now, with all these images returning
I wonder who I am today?
[Verse 2]
As a child, I refought the war
With plastic planes and imagination:
I sank Tirpitz, blew up the Mohne dam, all these and more
I was the saviour of the Nation!
Oh! To be the captain of a ship of war!
The pilot of a Tempest or a York!
To hold my trench against the Panzer Korps
Instead of simply being one who talks
And reminisces of his fantasies
As though life was nothing but to lose...
These only antecede the knowledge that, eventually
He must choose
[Bridge]
It's a hallmark of adulthood
That our options diminish
As our faculties for choice increase
Till we choose everything and nothing
Too late, at the finish
(Ah, ah!)
(Ahh)
(Ah-ah-ah-ahh, ahh, ahh)
(Ah-ah-ah-ahh, ahh, ahh!)
[Verse 3]
In my youth, I held belief:
My faith and thought were strong
But now I'm stripped of every leaf
And it robs me of the sight of right and wrong
Oh! To be the son of Che Guevara!
One unit in the serried ranks of black!
A Papist or an Orangeman, a eunuch...
Then doubt would never cast the dagger in my back!
Oh! To be King John or Douglas Bader
Humphrey Bogart or Victor Mature!
Which one is false and easy
Which one harder?
Of that, of this, of me
I'm really not too sure
A3 Tapeworm
Enlaces
Letras
[Verse 1]
When I was a child they made me to read
Word-daggers of quiver and squirm;
Now in the stumbling dark I see
I am a worm, silently fruiting your garden
My sister, my child
Night casts ominous meanings on the purity of my soul
I feel devilish leanings I'm beginning to lose control
And the vortex sucks me in
Steeped in sin I die
But am reborn
[Verse 2]
I want to see the cosmos slip
Planets and moons collide
Feel gravity lose its grip...
It's all inside
All the dead husks are shattered
My life-blood, my world ripped apart
In the laughter of space
It's all chaff blown out and lost
Now I am making the pace
Although I don't know what tape I'll cross
And it's maybe catastrophe
When I cross the line
I know that I will find myself
Or maybe you
[Interlude]
I am a man from the country of destruction
I am a man, a woman and a god
I am my own weapon of kamikaze
And will one day cut through the hidden knot
[Verse 3]
Feed me honey and watch me rise
To the bait lying on the knife;
If you let me I can hypnotise your life
It's all really so simple
My lover, my twin
Hand in hand, sprinting down the highway
Running over the edge
Down and down into our doomsday;
There is no saving ledge
Nor outgrown shrub
Is this the way?
Out in a blaze of glory?
Some day I'll find the answer
Some day I'll end the story!
A4 Again
Enlaces
Letras
[Verse 1]
I stretch my hands, clutch vacant laughter
In silence and sweet, sweet pain;
Without demand, but with a longing
[Refrain]
For what will never come again
[Verse 2]
I smell your perfume on the sheets in the morning:
It lingers like the patterns on the window after rain
A past that lives, if only for the present
[Refrain]
But which is gone and will never come again
[Bridge]
To your sad eyes, turned away, mine say
"Do you? Did you? How?"
As the darkness slides away the day
Shows what was and makes what is now
[Verse 3]
I see your picture as though it were a mirror
But there's no part of you outside the frame
Except the change that you gave to me:
[Refrain]
This will never come again
[Verse 4]
I am me, I was so before you
But afterwards I am not the same
You are gone and I am with you:
[Refrain]
This will never come again
This will never come again
This will never come again
A5 Faint-Heart and the Sermon
Enlaces
Letras
[Verse 1]
With my face drained of colour
And my brain of blood
Like Billy Budd
I'm lashed to the grating
With senses growing duller
And with quaking heart
I make a start
At temperature equating
And my lungs suck useless air
[Verse 2]
Like paraplegic dancers
In formation team
My understanding seems
Hidebound in its movements
Contemplating answers
That could break my bonds -
To be half wrong
Would be, in me, improvement...
But my comprehensive faculties are impaired
[Bridge]
And it seems absurd, but now all I've heard
Fades in empty words and is worthless
As the Human Laugh rocks the cenotaph
But the joke is half-true, and mirthless
[Verse 3]
Trying to trace a reason
From the spinning words
But all I've heard
Seem at odds with their meanings
Phonetically pleasing
But delivered in such haste
That in their place
My mind commences screaming
[Bridge]
On the verge of belief I crash onto the reef
And a cynical thief steals my senses
So I cling to the pew with dimensions askew
And recognition refuses present tenses
All the lives of the saints demonstrate that my faint
Is a minor complaint, but the end is
Nowhere in sight
Why can't I find me a way to go?
[Verse 4]
I don't want to die in the nave
But I know it may be with me some day
So I've got to find a way I can save up
My energies, and find a cause to pray
To something for something
To which I can give my creed
[Instrumental Bridge]
[Verse 5]
I'd gladly succumb to the wave
If I thought the water taught a way to light;
I'd gladly succumb - I'm not brave
And it's easy to believe what the preacher says
Except for the conflict raging between my head and my brain
I don't want to die, but just the same
Some day...
[Verse 6]
Waiting for a moment
That I know will come
When I'll have to run
And find another sermon
Everyman and Norman
And the talking priest--
Well, I am at least holding all the doors open
Inside me all outside is shared
[Bridge]
As the cracked bells peal it all seems unreal
But the seventh seal stays unbroken
And the Offertory plate tenders no escape -
Still I refuse to scrape up a token
Of esteem for these false
Alleyways of the course;
I must try to divorce sense from sensing
Tell me again
Tell me the way to go
[Outro]
So when I talk to myself
Although I take good care to listen
My heart grows ever more faint
There's something missing?
CARA B
B1 The Comet, the Course, the Tail
Enlaces
Letras
[Verse 1]
They say we are endowed with Free Will -
At least that justifies our need for indecision
But between our instincts and the lust to kill
We bow our heads in submission
They say that no man is an island
But then they say our castles are our homes;
It's felt the choice is ours, between peace and violence...
Oh, yes, we choose, alone?
While the comet spreads its tail across the sky
It nowhere near defines the course it flies
Nor does it find its own direction
Though the path of the comet be sure
Its constitution is not
So its meaning is possibly more
Than the tracing of a tail
In one brief shot at glory
[Verse 2]
Love and peace and individuality
So order and society are man-made?
War and hate and dark depravity
Or are we slaves?
Channeling aggressive energies
Like the death Wish and the Will to survive
Into finding and preserving enemies
Is that the only way we know we're alive?
In the slaughterhouse all corpses smell the same
Whether queens or pawns or innocents at the game;
In the cemetery a uniform cloaks the graves
Except for outward pomp and circumstance
[Verse 3]
There is a time set in the calendar
When all reason seems barely enough
To sustain all the shooting stars:
Times are rough
And I'm waiting for something to happen here
It feels as though it's long overdue...
Maybe a restatement of yesteryear
Or something entirely new
And the knowledge that we gain in part
Always leads us closer to the very start
And to the founding questions:
[Outro]
How can I tell that the road signed to hell
Doesn't lead up to heaven?
What can I say when, in some obscure way
I am my own direction?
Videos
B2 Gog; Magog (In Bromine Chambers)
Enlaces
Letras
["Gog"]
[Verse 1]
Some call me SATAN, others have me GOD
Some name me NEMO... I am unborn
Some speak of me in anagrams
Some grieve upon my wrath...
The ones who give me service, I grant my scorn
My words are 'Too late', 'Never', 'Impossible', and 'Gone';
My home is in the sunset and the dawn
[Pre-Chorus]
My Name is locked in silence
Sometimes it's whispered out of spite
All gates are locked
All doors are barred and bolted
There is no place for flight
[Chorus]
Will you not come to me
And love me for one more night?
[Verse 2]
Some see me shining, others have me dull;
Gun-metal and cut diamond - I am ALL
Some swear they see me weeping in the poppy-fields of France...
In the tumbling of the dice see them fall!
Some laugh and see me laughing down the corridors of power:
Some see my sign on Caesar and his pal
[Pre-Chorus]
My face is robed in darkness
Sometimes you glimpse me in the shade
All friends have gone
All calls are weak and wasted
There is no more to say
[Chorus]
Will you not crawl to me
And love me for one more day?
[Instrumental Break]
[Verse 3]
Some wish me empty, others will me full
Some crave of me infinity - I am NONE
Some look for me in symbols
Some trace my line in stars
Some count my ways in numbers:
Well, I am No One
Some chronicle my movements, my colours and my clothes
Some trace the work in progress
Well, it is done
It is done!
It is done!
[Pre-Chorus]
My soul is cast in crystal
Yet unrevealed beneath the knife
All wells are dry, all bread is masked in fungus
And now disease is rife
[Chorus]
Will you not run from this
And love me for one more life?
[Pre-Chorus]
My soul is cast in crystal
Yet unrevealed beneath the knife
All wells are dry, all bread is masked in fungus
And now disease is rife
[Chorus]
Will you not run from this
And love me for one more life?
Will you not run from this
And love me for one more life?
Will you not run from this
And love me for one more life?
[Instrumental Break]
["Magog (In Bromine Chambers)"]
[Intro]
In Bromine Chambers
[Verse 4]
In Bromine Chambers
There can be no mercy
No bitter flagellation for your sins;
No forgiveness and no sackcloth
Can cease the dance
Of ashes on the wind
[Verse 5]
Too late now for a wish
To change all wishing;
Too late to change, to breathe, to grow
Too late to smother out the tell-tale footprints
Which mark your passage through the greying snow
Mi opinión personal sobre el álbum:
Otro buen álbum de Peter Hammill, en el que demuestra todo su potencial compositivo e interpretativo. En él se encuentra una evolución de sonido al incorporar el uso del sintetizador y el melotrón. El álbum comienza con Ferret and Featherbird, una canción escrita para el primer álbum de VdGG en 1969. La herencia de VdGG continúa en las siguientes canciones "Sub Mariner" y "Tapeworm". Again es la canción que más me gusta del álbum con su toque barroco porque la considero la más personal de Hammill. Faint-Heart es de lo mejorcito del álbum con mucho mellotrón como a mí me gusta. The Comet, the Course, the Tail que abre la cara B destaca por sus letras y es otro de los mejores momentos del álbum. De la última parte de la cara B me gusta la parte Gog, aún con sus ritmos tribales y su fondo aterrador pero no la Magog en la que se adentra en la música concreta.
Créditos
Peter Hammill – voz, piano (1–5, 8), guitarras acústicas y eléctricas (1, 3–6, 8), bajo (2–4, 6, 7), sintetizador ARP2600 (2, 5, 6, 8), Mellotron (5, 8), armonio (7)
Guy Evans – batería(3, 7)
Chris Judge Smith – percusión, coros(8)
Paul Whitehead– percusión(8)
Técnico
Peter Hammill - ingeniero de grabación (Sofa Sound, Sussex), productor
David Hentschel – ingeniero de grabación, programación ARP, mezcla, "studio wizardry" (Trident Studios, Londres)
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| David Hentschel |
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