Peter Hammill
In Camera

April Nineteen Seventy-Four. Just two months after "The Silent Corner And The Empty Stage," Peter Hammill releases this "In Camera" and, miracle to be said, it's another masterpiece, in a very short, almost superhuman time for a musician... The fact is that the songs speak for themselves, and this is an album of great caliber, indeed I would say incredible: the same formula (for the last time, whether fortunately or unfortunately) as the previous two albums "Chameleon In The Shadow Of Night" and the aforementioned "The Silent Corner And The Empty Stage," but with some changes: the slide guitar ballads remain the same, but those for piano are replaced by a more modern and technological synthesizer, and, as for the final suite, which usually concluded the previous two albums, here instead it’s a decoy suite, since the ten-minute coda of the last piece is nothing but a sampler of background noises and strange effects...

But let's get to the album.

"Ferret And Featherbird" is a song not very indicative to understand the album, both because it dates back to the year sixty-nine and Hammill "resurrects" it without any apparent reason, and because it’s a bizarre mix of almost Hawaiian sounds and piano, on which Hammill's beautiful ethereal singing is nevertheless inserted. A song that leaves one puzzled, as if to say "Is it a joke?...".

"No More (The Submariner)": here the album truly begins, with David Henteschel's synthesizer (composer of soundtracks like "The Squeeze" and "Operation Daybreak") chilling the blood at the opening of the piece by simulating the crazy sound of a siren; then the bass is added, and in the central part Henteschel's synthesizer and Hammill's superb piano intersect in divergent and concentric flights, forming an aerial-sonic skirmish; then at minute Three\Forty a pause, the reprise, and finally Hammill's continuous echoing screams to close the piece. And what a piece...

"Tapeworm" is another exaggerated piece, worthy of being in an ex-Van Der Graaf Generator album: it's a strongly rock piece, dominated by a fixed-pattern piano chord progression, the increasingly havoc-thirsty saxophone of David Jackson, and the overwhelming drumming of Guy Evans who hits hard in this piece like never before; in the middle section, Hammill also provides one of his usual cabaret interludes reminiscent, for instance, of "The Sleepwalkers" by Van Der Graaf Generator.

"Again" would seem the usual acoustic guitar ballad, but here, and perhaps for the first time, Hammill reaches the state of "beautiful song": this is mainly, indeed I would dare say entirely, due to the poignant bass that accompanies the acoustic guitar from the middle part of the song onwards. A song in minor tone, however, if I may say so.

"Faint-heart And The Sermon" ("The Weak and the Sermon" it should mean) is another peak, and here there's always Henteschel maneuvering a wonderful synthesizer, skillfully surrounded by Hammill's bass and piano; the chorus is monotonously catchy (allow me the linguistic stretch), but then it transforms into Hammill's "usual" elegiac song, significantly reinforced in the finale by another effect of sirens, intrusive and powerful, from Henteschel.

"The Comet, The Course, The Tail", another acoustic ballad, almost reconnects to the despair of "Viking" in "Fool's Mate": here too we find an assertive bass imposing its hits, though this time machine-gun-like. The song works very well, especially thanks to Hammill's singing, unmatched in my opinion in modulating certain epically tragic musical tones.

"Gog Magog (In Bromine Chambers)" should be the final prog-suite, should, because, as I have already announced in the introduction to this "description" of the album, in fact it is not: and to say that the introduction promises well, with a majestic church organ, then Hammill's somber and slow singing (heartbreaking the part where Hammill sings "My home is the sunset" "My home is the sunset"...), and finally Evans' usual frantic drumming; the singing in the part "Will you not come to me\ and love me for one more night?" "So, won’t you come to me\ and love me for one more night": it’s not the love disappointment of a sad lover, but it's Satan himself speaking, inviting you to another diabolical meeting, he who was the father of all the Evil of the world, and whose name "is locked in silence" "Is locked in silence" and vain are the attempts, through anagrams, designs, or symbolic numbers (666) made by Man to enclose it in some form, to give it a name: "I Am NONE" "I am none of these" says Hammill\Satana.

The rest of the song, finally, from the seventh minute onwards, is not worth mentioning, as, as already mentioned, it is a pure succession of psychedelic sounds for their own sake.

In conclusion, one of Hammill's most beautiful albums, among the most refined and inspired, perhaps my favorite, also for the wonderful cover depicting the musician wrapped in a black cloak with a shining light in his chest...