Price: £12.00
Format: CD
Artist: Peter Hammill
CatNo: FIE9137
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all that might have been Peter Hammill cd
The main CD edition of Peter Hammill's uniquely ambitious 2014 solo album.
 
This is not a disc of conventional songs, though the fragments from which it's formed originally came from discrete examples of the standard form. These pieces, though, have been cut up and rearranged to form a continuous whole.
 
As in a film, scenes blur into one another, moving backwards and forwards in time and space. Characters appear and disappear, wait in the shadows or are suddenly front of stage and under the spotlight. It's a chiaroscuro, quicksand world in which the music is both its own soundtrack and screenplay.
 
Written and recorded over an eighteen month period - the longest ever for a PH solo work - the album has gone through many twists, turns and transformations before arriving in this final form. It's not a concept album as such but its use of jagged soundscapes, fleeting and shadowed characters and elusive plotlines place it closer to a cinematic world than a narrative song one. 
 
The sound palate consists of guitars, synths, crushed beats and, of course, insistent vocals and is unlike anything else Peter has attempted during his forty-five year career.
 
The music is continuous, cross-fading from one piece to another.
In overview
The last time
Never wanted
As for him
Nowhere special
Piper Smile
Wanted to belong
This might....
Inklings, darling
Be careful
Alien Clock
Drifting through
Washed up
Rumpled sheets
Fool-proof
Can't get home
Washed away
Back road
The line goes dead
He turns away
Hooks