| PETER HAMMILL & GUY EVANS SPUR OF THE MOMENT | |
Date Records version:
| 01. Sweating It Out (6:35) 02. Surprise / Little Did He Know (9:29) 03. Without A Glitch (3:29) 04. Anatol's Proposal (4:02) 05. You Think Not? (4:33) 06. Multiman (8:07) 07. Deprogramming Archie (1:48) 08. Always So Polite (5:24) 09. An Imagined Brother (5:22) 10. Bounced (5:15) 11. Roger And Out (1:35) Total playing time: 55:45 Note: the Red Hot Records version has different tracking order: 01. Sweating It Out (6:40) 02. Surprise/Little Did He Know (9:34) 03. Multiman (8:11) 04. Deprogramming Archie (1:52) 05. Always So Polite (5:28) 06. An Imagined Brother (5:26) 07. Bounced (5:20) 08. Roger & Out (1:37) 09. Without A Glitch (3:33) 10. Anatol's Proposal (4:06) 11. You Think Not? (4:33) All tracks by Hammill/Evans except * by Hammill/Evans/Ridout Peter Hammill: Vocals, Guitars, Keyboards Guy Evans: Percussion Produced by Peter Hammill Recorded & mixed at Sofa Sound, Freshford, Bath Remastered at Crescent Studios, Bath Engineered by Peter Hammill & Paul Ridout Sleeve by Ridout All compositions published by Static Music, Ltd. 'This is the first collaborative venture by Peter Hammill & Guy Evans since their days as members of Van der Graaf Generator. This music is instrumental & entirely improvised. Peter Hammill plays grand piano, semi-acoustic guitar and, principally, a mother keyboard driving various rock-mounted samplers & synthesizers. Guy Evans performs on a percussion 'kit' consisting of a number of acoustic instruments & an Octapad with which he triggers a variety of sampled & synthesized sounds. Some of these belong to the traditional percussion family, included sampled versions of intruments of his own design; others are pianos, strings, woodwind & other customised voices.. Additionally, both players use samples taken from various field recordings, & often play 'mirror images' of each others' sounds. In much of this music the straight edges of the conventional instrument/instrumentalist picture become blurred; often the overall effect is some strange modern variant on the traditional piano duet. Each piece of improvisation was preceded by a process of 'instrument selection' in which the sounds which each player could control were chosen, & fundamental note-patterns for the ensuing performances were decided upon. Beyound this, no structure for the music was arranged in advance, & complete performances were then recorded both on tape & sequencers; in the course of this, sounds & scales could be changed both by the performers themselves & by Paul Ridout, who was in charge of the live & computer recordings as well as being librarian & editor of the voices employed. Selections were then taken from the resulting improvisations & were mixed & treated, without overdubbing, to produce the music contained herein. In places, the use of cross-fades moves the action from one moment's landscape to another; in some cases, loops were taken from performances, either in computer sequence or analogue tape form, from which 'new' pieces emerged. In general, though, this music is in real time, & the discovery & development of the themes & patterns are heard exactly as they happened. Although these pieces are incapable of being placed in any normal musical classification they draw on the spirits, sounds & styles of all. "Spur of the Moment" is an effort - by a pair of musicians with two decades of shared playing experience - to pull together the tradition & excitement of improvisation with the challenges & technical opportunities offered by modern instruments & recording techniques... something new.' (Date Records release notes) (P) © 1988 Date Records
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