Contenido de esta entrada:
Enlaces, letras y opinión personal
Anterior entrada de Peter Hammill: 1973: El camaleón en la sombra de la noche con Peter Hammill
Siguiente entrada de Peter Hammill: 1974: En la cámara con Peter Hammill
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| Portada del tercer álbum de Peter Hammill |
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.
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 este artículo comentamos su tercer álbum, The Silent Corner and The Empty Stage, publicado en 1974.
Historia
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, tales como "A Louse Is Not a Home" de su tercer álbum The Silent Corner and The Empty Stage, el cual, como con muchos de los álbumes en solitario de Hammill de este período, otros ex miembros de Van der Graaf Generator actúan en el álbum.
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.
Grabación del álbum
El álbum fue producido por John Anthony y por Peter Hammill en los Rockfield Studios (Gales) y en los Sofa Sound (Sussex). Para la mezcla final se utilizaron los entonces mucho mejor equipados Trident Studios de Londres.
El álbum cuenta con la participación de miembros de VdGG, Hugh Banton, Guy Evans y David Jackson.
La larga "A Louse is not a Home" es una canción sobre la naturaleza de la identidad. Fue escrita originalmente para el álbum de Van der Graaf Generator que hubiera seguido a Pawn Hearts, un álbum que debido a la separación de la banda nunca llegó a existir. Cuenta con los ex-miembros de Van der Graaf Generator y fue (al igual que "In the Black Room" del álbum anterior) tocado en vivo por el grupo ya a mediados de 1972 (justo antes de la separación) y de nuevo con la banda reformada en 1975.
"Forsaken Gardens" (también tocada en vivo en 1975) y "Red Shift" son dos canciones más que cuentan con ex miembros de VdGG.
"La mentira (Santa Teresa de Bernini)" alude en parte al Éxtasis de Santa Teresa de Bernini. "Red Shift" cuenta con el guitarrista de Spirit, Randy California, en la guitarra principal. Hammill ha interpretado a menudo la canción "Modern" en concierto. "Wilhelmina" está escrita para la bebé recién nacida de Guy Evans, Tamra.
Lanzamiento del álbum
El álbum fue lanzado el 8 de febrero de 1974 con Charisma Records. En Estados Unidos no se publicó.
La edición original estaba contenida en una carpeta desplegable. La portada fue diseñada por Bettina Hohls, ex-miembro de la banda de rock psicodélico alemán Ash Ra Tempel que ya hemos comentado en este blog. Hohls también contribuyó a la portada del álbum anterior de Hammill, Chameleon in the Shadow of the Night, con fotos suyas tomadas en Hamburgo.
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| Fotografía de Bettina Hohls |
El interior de la carpeta solo muestra un dibujo de diseño futurista.
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| Interior de la carpeta de la carpeta del álbum |
La portada muestra el logotipo personal que Hammill introdujo con el anterior álbum que representa el símbolo astrológico y que aparecería en las portadas de muchos lanzamientos venideros.
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| Logotipo de Hammill |
Reediciones
En 2006 fue publicado en forma remasterizada por EMI Virgin Records, complementado con tres bonus tracks: "The Lie (Bernini's Saint Theresa)" grabado en vivo en la Iglesia Unitaria All Souls, Kansas City, el 16 de febrero de 1978. y dos temas correspondientes a una sesión de la BBC en febrero de 1974.
Recepción
La prensa musical del Reino Unido fue generalmente muy positiva sobre el álbum.
Uno de los mejores álbumes en solitario de Hammill. Las letras que invitan a la reflexión y cuestionan "Forsaken Gardens" y "A Louse Is Not a Home" cuestionan las premisas fundamentales de la sociedad moderna (un tema que luego continuó enThe Noise), mientras que "Rubicon" es una canción de amor verdaderamente sensual. A lo largo del álbum, la voz de Hammill recorre las profundidades y llega a los cielos y explora cada lugar entre a veces duro, a veces tan suave como una canción de cuna. Siempre eficaz.Ali Sinclair en AllMusic
Enlaces, letras y opinión personal
Enlace al álbum completo:
Enlace a la lista de reproducción del álbum: The Silent Corner And The Empty Stage
Lista de canciones
Cara 1
1. "Modern" 7:28
2. "Wilhelmina" 5:18
3. "The Lie (Bernini's Saint Theresa)" 5:41
4. "Forsaken Gardens" 6:16
Cara 2
1. "Red Shift" 8:11
2. "Rubicon" 4:41
3. "A Louse is Not a Home" 12:15
CARA A
A1 Modern
Enlaces
Letras
[Verse 1]
Jericho's strange, throbbing with life at its heart -
People are drawn together, simultaneously torn apart...
Foundations are shattered in the city
Inside the barricaded doors;
Hiding behind their walls, lonely as night falls
Maybe the people are waiting for trumpets
[Verse 2]
Babylon's strange, seventh wonder of the earth -
Gardens ablaze in colour, slowly rotting in the dirt
Oh, yes, and, with your head on fire, you know that you can't really see
The hanging gardens sing
But with a hollow ring:
The life is false, it's killing me...
[Bridge]
Don't look back or you'll turn to stone;
Look around before your life is overgrown
With concrete slabs
On your back the searching eyes that stab
Between chintz curtains, glinting
But never owning to a name...
Like the inmates of asylums
All the citizens are contagiously insane...
[Interlude]
[Verse 3]
Atlantis is strange, the explosion of an age -
No-one really knows what to do
And the city is a cage
It traps in ashen hours and concrete towers
Imprisons in the social order
The city's lost its way
Madness takes hold today...
[Outro]
I can't live under water
I can't live under water
I can't live under water
Videos
A2 Wilhelmina
Enlaces
Letras
[Verse 1]
Willie, what can I say to you
To hold true in your changing life?
You've come into a cruel world;
Little girls can lose their way in the growing night...
I hope you'll be alright
[Verse 2]
Willie, try to stay a child sometime
For as long as you feel you can learn
'Cause babies all turn to people
And people can really be strange;
They change and, changing, bring pain
[Bridge]
Try to treat your parents well because they care
And what more can you do?
When you find your lovers, be good to them
As you hope they'll be to you -
Be honest
Be true
[Verse 3]
Willie, you are the future;
All our lives, in the end are in your hands
Life's hard now; you know it gets harder
And hope is but a single strand:
We pass it on and hope you'll understand...
[Bridge]
We know that we do it wrong
We're not so strong and not so sure at all;
Groping in our blindness
We may seem big now but, really, we're so
Small and alone and searching for a home
In the night
[Verse 4]
Meanwhile you're still a baby;
You'll be a lady soon enough
And then you will feel the burn, so hold my words:
People all turn to children
Spiteful children, and they're really so cruel
Cruel fools!
Just follow your own rules...
[Outro]
Don't think that I'm silly, Willie
If I say I hope that there is hope for you
A3 The Lie (Bernini's Saint Theresa)
Enlaces
Letras
[Verse 1]
Genuflection, erection in church
Sacristy cloth, moth-eaten shroud
Secret silence, sacred secrets
Accumulate dust, aggravate the eye
[Verse 2]
Incautious laughter after confession
Benediction, fictional fear
Hidden faces... Grace is a name
Like Chastity, like Lucifer, like mine!
[Bridge]
You took me through the window-stain
Drowned in image, incense
Choir-refrain and slow ecstasy
I'd embrace you if I only knew your name
[Verse 3]
The silent corner haunts my shadow prayers
Ice-cold statue, rapture divine
Unconscious eyes, the open mouth
The wound of love
The Lie!
[Bridge]
You took me, gave me reasons for
Saints and missals, vigils
All the more holy martyrs
I'd embrace you and walk through
The one-way door
I'd embrace you
But it would be just another lie!
Videos
A4 Forsaken Gardens
Enlaces
Letras
[Verse 1]
Where are all the joys of yesterday?
Where, now, is the happiness and laughter that we shared?
Gone, like our childhood dreams, aspirations and beliefs;
Time is a thief, and he ravages our gardens
Stripping saplings, felling trees
Trampling on our flowers, sucking sap and drying seeds
In the midnight candle-light of experience
All colour fades, green fingers grey
[Verse 2]
Time, alone, shall murder all the flowers
Still, there's time to share our plots and all that we call 'ours'
How much worse, then, if we all deny each others' needs
And keep our gardens privately?
[Bridge]
Its getting colder, wind and rain leave gashes;
Looking back, I only see the friends I've lost
Fires smoulder, raking through the ashes
My hands are dirty, my mind is numb
I count the cost of 'I':
"I need to get on, I've got to tend my garden;
Got to shut you out, no time to crave your pardon now"
[Verse 3]
Now I see the garden that I've grown is
Just the same as those outside;
The fences that, erected to protect, simply divide...
There's ruination everywhere
The weather has played havoc with the grass...
Does anyone believe his garden's really going to last?
Then in the time allotted us, can any man keep miserly his own?
Oh, is there any pleasure in a solitary growth?
[Instrumental Break]
[Verse 4]
Come and see my garden if you will
I'd like someone to see it all before each root is killed
Surely now its time to open up each life to all
Tear down the walls, if it's not too late!
[Verse 5]
There is so much sorrow in the world
There is so much emptiness and heartbreak and pain
Somewhere on the road we have all taken a wrong turn...
How can we build the right path again?
[Outro]
Through the grief, through the pain
Our flowers need each other's rain...
Videos
CARA B
B1 Red Shift
Enlaces
Letras
[Intro]
There's no good point to go from in the future
[Verse 1]
Once, all the stars in the sky were bright
Now they're red and fading
And all the colours we wore and the shades that we bore
Have moved
And the gold turns to red with no time for changes
[Chorus]
Red Shift, is moving away from we
Red Shift, all moving away from we
[Verse 2]
Once, constellations were holy, now darkness
Pervades all the older ones
And in the brunt of implosion, all yesterday's golden
Now reddened suns
And hope is a word with no space for blame in
[Chorus]
Red Shift, displaced now in time and relativity
Red Shift, all moving away from we
[Interlude]
So here I am, though I might well be with me
I'm falling down deep to the rim of the wheel
Is it sham?
Does the world have a meaning?
The more that we know, the greater confusion grows:
Stars are like atoms, and atoms are patterns
And probably in the end
Maybe its all been a dream...
[Verse 3]
Time locked in negative matter
All theories shatter beneath the weight
Happy is the man who believes that the world is a dream
And all reason, fate
And time moves on with no time
The eye moves on with no rhyme
And I'm a song in the depth of the galaxies
[Chorus]
Red Shift is taking away my sanity
Red Shift, all moving away from we...
B2 Rubicon
Enlaces
Letras
[Verse 1]
I lay down beside you:
I am a unicorn, you a virginal maid
And I come in laughing play
But, maybe, to be saved
[Verse 2]
Peer through the backcloth:
I am a character in the play
The words I slur are pre-ordained
We know them anyway
[Chorus]
Don't change your mind, don't be a fickle friend;
Don't change your mind, oh, don't pretend to something false
[Verse 3]
Open the toy-box:
You are Pandora, I am the World
If you cross the stream, you never can return;
If you stay, you'll surely burn
[Chorus]
Don't change your mind, don't come all orchid eyes;
Don't change your mind, don't disguise the fear you feel
It's real, and you must...
[Verse 4]
... Guard your castle well
For I am the lone wolf and the boar at bay
Grant me your Pax, you know we only live today
And on, and on, and into
[Verse 5]
"So long"
It takes so long to drown
It takes so very long to choke on the taste you'd spurned
If you cross the stream you never can return
If you stay you'll surely burn
If you stay you'll surely burn
If you stay you'll surely burn
B3 A Louse Is Not a Home
Enlaces
Letras
[Intro]
Sometimes it's very scary here, sometimes it's very sad
Sometimes I think I'll disappear; betimes I think I have
There's a line snaking down my mirror
Splintered glass distorts my face
And though the light is strong and strange
It can't illuminate the musty corners of this place
There is a lofty, lonely, Lohengrenic castle in the clouds;
Yes, and I draw my murky meanings there
But seven years' dark luck is just around the corner
And in the shadows lurks the spectre of Despair
[Bridge]
A cracked mirror 'mid the drapes of the landing:
Split image, labored understanding...
I'm only trying to find a place to hide my home
[Instrumental Break]
[Verse 1]
I've lived in houses composed of glass
Where every movement is charted
But now the monitor screens are dark
And I can't tell if silent eyes are there
My words are spiders upon the page
They spin out faith, hope and reason -
But are they meet and just, or only dust
Gathering about my chair?
Sometimes I get the feeling
That there's someone else there:
The faceless watcher makes me uneasy;
I can feel him through the floorboards
And His presence is creepy
He informs me that I shall be expelled
What is that but out of and into?
Don't know the nature of the door that I'd go through
Don't know the nature of the nature that I am inside...
[Verse 2]
I've lived in houses of brick and lead
Where all emotion is sacred
And if you want to devour the fruit
You must first sniff at the fragrance
And lay your body before the shrine
With poems and posies and papers
Or, if you spot the ruse, you'll have to choose
To stay, a monk, or leave, a vagrant
What is this place you call home?
Is it a sermon or a confession?
Is it the chalice that you use for protection?
Is it really only somewhere you can stay?
Is it a rule-book or a lecture?
Is it a beating at the hands of your Protector?
Does the idol have feet of clay?
[Segue]
[Verse 3]
Home is what you make it
So my friends all say
But I rarely see their homes in these dark days
Some of them are snails
And carry houses on their backs;
Others live in monuments
Which, one day, will be racks
I keep my home in place
With sellotape and tin-tacks;
But I still feel there's some other Force here...
[Verse 4]
He who cracks the mirrors and moves the walls
Keeps staring through
The eye-slits of the portraits in my hall
He ravages my library and taps the telephone
I've never actually seen Him
But I know He's in my home
And if he goes away
I can't stay here either
I believe... er... I think...
Well, I don't know...
[Segue]
[Interlude]
I only live in one room at a time
But all of the walls are ears and all the windows, eyes
Everything else is foreign
And 'home' is my wordless chant:
Mmmmmaah!
Give it a chance!
[Verse 5]
I am surrounded by flesh and bone
I am a temple of living
I am a hermit, I am a drone
And I am boring out a place to be
With secret garlands about my head
Unearthly silence is broken
The room is growing dark, and in the stark light
I see a face I know
Could this be the guy who never shows
The cracked mirror what he's feeling
Merely mumbles prayers to the ground where he's kneeling:
"Home is home is home is home is home is home is home is me!"?
All you people looking for your houses
Don't throw your weight around
You might break your glasses
And if you do, you know you just can't see
[Bridge]
And then how are you to find
The dawning of the day?
Day is just a word I use
To keep the dark at bay
People are imaginary, nothing else exists
Except the room I'm sitting in
And, of course, the all-pervading mist -
Sometimes I wonder if even that's real
[Outro]
Maybe I should de-louse this place
Maybe I should de-place this louse
Maybe I'll maybe my life away
In the confines of this silent house
Sometimes it's very scary here, sometimes it's very sad
Sometimes I think I'll disappear, sometimes I think...
I... I... I... I...
Videos
Mi opinión personal sobre el álbum:
Un álbum más íntimo con guitarra acústica y piano que los que hacía con VdGG por aquel entonces. Uno de los mejores álbumes de rock progresivo de 1974 y uno de los mejores álbumes de Peter Hammill. El álbum comienza con Modern, un canto y una guitarra desenfrenada. Wilhelmina, una suave balada para mí de lo mejor del álbum. The Lie es un tema oscuro muy expresivo a través de la voz y el piano. Forsaken Gardens es otro tema de los que más me gustan, que me recuerdan al VdGG más progresivo. Red Shift es un tema de rock progresivo con aires psicodélicos. Rubicon me vuelve a recordar al Bowie de la era Space Oddity. El álbum cierra con la buena suite progresiva A Louse Is Not A Home, el broche de oro para el álbum.
Créditos
Peter Hammill – voz, guitarra eléctrica y acústica(1, 2, 5, 6), piano(2, 3, 4, 7),Mellotron (1, 2), bajo(1, 2, 6),armonio(1),oscilador(6)
Hugh Banton – Hammond órgano,pedales debajo y bajo(3, 4, 7),órgano Farfisa(5), coros
Guy Evans – percusión, batería (4, 5, 7)
David Jackson – saxofones flauta, alto, tenor y soprano (4, 5, 7)
Randy California– guitarra solista(5)
Técnico
John Anthony – productor
Peter Hammill - ingeniero de grabación (Sofa Sound, Sussex), productor
Pat Moran – ingenieros de grabación (Rockfield Studios, Monmouth)
David Hentschel – mezcla (Trident Studios, Londres)
Bettina Hohls – ilustraciones
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| David Hentschel |
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