Cargo Records

This

'This' is the fortieth album for which Peter Hammill has been responsible...some would say guilty. It is released on the eve of his fiftieth birthday, after thirty years of music making.

The seven songs (and three instrumental 'fragments') on 'This' mark a clear statement of intent to continue pushing at boundaries within the overall context of The Song. Many features of the soundscape will be familiar to those who have followed Peter's music over the years: shape-shifting changes of mood and temperature; lots of "how did we get here from there;" instrumental colouring by turns delicate and brutal; trademark washes of backing vocals; the juxtaposition of the tightly arranged and the purely improvised. Instrumental contributors are his long-term cohorts Stuart Gordon (violin), Manny Elias (percussion) and David Jackson (saxes and flute). The lead voice is, as always, insistently to the fore, with the passing of time and rites of passage remaining the central lyrical concerns. To some, Peter is barking mad; to others, an eccentric of genius. What is clear is that his appetite for the fray remains undiminished. Moments here such as the guitar-driven nastiness of 'Always is Next,' the languorous development of 'The Light Continent' or the piano-based meditation on parenthood of 'Since the Kids' offer proof that This has not stopped yet....