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Rating: It happens suddenly, the poisoned initial arpeggios of "Modern" insinuate themselves sternly, bristling like thorny bushes; that voice... that voice does not delay in arriving, sublime and desperately angry together, strings words laden with solitude, towering among the electric delirium crashing against the arch of the sky, now completely darkened. A sky black as pitch, the central breaks of the composition insert repeated sonic electroshocks amid gloomy, sacred, total organistic streaks; in the darkness of the sky returns that voice, carved in a skull of stars and comets that, as they fall, irradiate the dark with golden light; for a moment, the infinite materializes before human eyes, totally unprepared to grasp its purest essence and destined to wander eternally in a limbo between pain and boredom. The necromancer Peter Hammill becomes here a shamanic figure, transfigured between obsessiveness and delirium.
The instrumental setup is stripped to the bone, the piano, the voice, and very little else; it is the minimalist framework that triggers vertigo between the marvelous and the terrible of "Wilhelmina", bleeding tears from a spirit torn in its essence. It is an intimate and explosive canticle carried forward by a Peter Hammill fresh off two excellent solo chapters, still at the peak of his tormented and tearing existentialist vein, reclaiming with this work what rightfully belongs to him: the pathos, the stormy, dark, and brilliant creativity of the phenomenal generator put in (temporary) hibernation in that 1974. The marble and heartbreaking thrill of a dark pearl like "The Lie (Bernini's Saint Theresa)" lascivious, impetuous, and intimate, tears and torments every shred of emotion left intact; it is pure liberating force, pure sonic ecstasy, with those auroral piano notes and those powerful, black, infernal organistic chasms, Hammill intones "blasphemous" litanies at the threshold of the wonderful, illuminating himself with dim light and sheer terror.
A work of such artistic level and monumental drama had not shone in the hands of Hammill and his generator-affiliated associates (present here in full) since the days of that immortal work, "Pawn Hearts", sculpted in eternity at the threshold of the end of the generator's sublime first phase as a group. Composed precisely for that immense shadow ensemble, but then steered for Hammill's solo path, two dark gems were indeed forged, radiating melancholy and dark decadence: "Forsaken Gardens" and "A Louse Is Not A Home", wonderfully dramatic in their purity and twilight strength, Hammill's voice radiating torment and wonder raises crystal cathedrals as immense and grandiose as they are fragile and precarious. The instrumental constructions graft onto the sound fabric in daring modes, at times raw, impetuous, and tense, in permanent dualism between meditative and chiaroscuro moments and explosive inserts, the lyricism imbued with disarming intimacy cloaked in totalizing decay, black as stone, dark as night.
A feeling of solitude difficult to dispel, "Red Shift" tries, psychedelic and vibrant, with the harshness of guest Randy California's guitar and oblique and disorienting instrumental constructions, "Rubicon" also attempts, relaxed and calm, maneuvered between voice and acoustic guitar, but these are efforts that, although excellent, do not affect the dark and contemplative atmosphere of one of the most memorable chapters (if not the most memorable) of a vast, courageous, and high-quality solo discography by the ingenious necromancer Peter Hammill.
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