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Rating: In 1970, the Van Der Graaf Generator had just come off their debut album from the previous year, "The Aerosol Grey Machine," a good record but still too raw and searching for a precise stylistic direction. Everything changed within a few months with the addition to the lineup led by the necromancer Peter Hammill of saxophonist David Jackson and bassist Nick Potter, completing the formation alongside Guy Evans (drums) and Hugh Banton (organ and piano) and creating with this work the first jewel of the trilogy of progressive masterpieces that would culminate with the epochal "Pawn Hearts."
A cold breath of wind falls on a desolate and inert landscape, it's "Darkness 11/11" forcefully breaking in with its monolithic bass lines marking the structured, swirling, and powerful rhythms of the drumming, over the backdrop of dark, solemn, and sinister organ sounds. Jackson's delirious sax and Hammill's voice flawlessly support each other, Hammill's voice ranging from suffering and subdued tones to furious screamed peaks, all of this without considering his lyrics, so atypical for the 70's prog scene, dealing in a hermetic and extraordinary way with existential discomfort, fear, anguish, and the occult. "Darkness 11/11" concludes in the chaos created by Jackson's "violated" sax. A sweet sound lightly hovers, and "Refugees" expands slow and wonderful, melancholic and dreamy, Hammill's voice reaches to touch the divine with disarming and extraordinary expressiveness. The entire band surpasses itself in intensity and cohesion, reaching a peak in the choral and celestial finale where the music itself goes to caress the faces of angels.
Solemn and ecclesiastical organ sounds open "White Hammer," dark and insistent, the bass reigning relentlessly, Jackson on winds is something unique, imposing a style that has become a school in progressive rock. Extraordinary instrumental inventions supported by Hammill's at times furious, at times shadowy and visionary voice, in the final part of the track, the sound fades and expands into a black and gloomy abyss, an electric guitar creates a violent and abrasive sound vortex followed by the powerful cadence of the drums and reached by a screaming and threatening sax solo by an inspired Jackson.
The style that characterizes the Van Der Graaf Generator not only forms with this work but remains one of the most brilliant and inspired examples of their entire history. Hammill's compositional style, gothic, poignant, and poetic, reaches a luminous and extraordinary peak in this record. The intense "Whatever Would Robert Have Said?" focused on mood changes and instrumental crescendos once again highlights the neurotic sax and Hammill's voice that effortlessly spans tones of all kinds, all supported as always by a powerful and imaginative rhythm section and touching and intimate lyrics. "Out Of My Book," shorter and less intricate and convoluted than other compositions, is orchestrated on relaxed atmospheres, a sort of calm before the storm. The sepulchral "After The Flood" closes the album, filled with decadent atmospheres describing the fate of a humanity on the brink of the abyss, near its end, the sound rich in full instrumental sections, acoustic passages, and majestic sound crescendos impregnated with an agitated progression having a dramatic impact, just like Hammill's suggestive and extraordinary vocal performance as always.
A sinister work, majestic, deeply moving and intense, one of the greatest masterpieces of progressive and music in general, as well as being one of the major masterpieces of this ingenious English formation.
Tracklist Lyrics and Samples
01 Darkness (11/11) (07:27)
Day dawns dark, it now numbers infinity.
Life crawls from the past, watching in wonder
I trace its patterns in me.
Tomorrow's tomorrow is birth again.
Boats burn the bridge in the fens;
the time of the past returns to my life
and uses it.
Don't blame me for the letters that may form in the sand;
don't look in my eyes, you may see all the numbers
that stretch in my sky and colour my hand.
Don't say that I'm wrong in imagining
that the voice of my life cannot sing.
Fate enters and talks in old words:
they amuse it.
Hands shine darkly and white;
only in dark do they appear.
Bless the baby born today,
flying in pitch, flying on fear.
They shine in my eyes and touch my face
where I have seen them placed before;
don't blame me, please, for the fate that falls:
I did not choose it.
I did not, no, no, I did not,
I truly did not choose it.
02 Refugees (06:22)
(Hammill)
North was somewhere years ago and cold:
Ice locked the people's hearts and made them old.
South was birth to pleasant lands, but dry:
I walked the waters' depths and played my mind.
East was dawn, coming alive in the golden sun:
the winds came, gently, several heads became one
in the summertime, though august people sneered;
we were at peace, and we cheered.
We walked alone, sometimes hand in hand,
between the thin lines marking sea and sand;
smiling very peacefully,
we began to notice that we could be free,
and we moved together to the West.
West is where all days will someday end;
where the colours turn from grey to gold,
and you can be with the friends.
And light flakes the golden clouds above all;
West is Mike and Susie,
West is where I love.
There we shall spend our final days of our lives;
tell the same old stories: yeah well, at least we tried.
Into the West, smiles on our faces, we'll go;
oh, yes, and our apologies to those
who'll never really know the way.
We're refugees, walking away from the life
that we've known and loved;
nothing to do or say, nowhere to stay; now we are alone.
We're refugees, carrying all we own
in brown bags, tied up with string;
nothing to think, it doesn't mean a thing,
but we'll be happy on our own.
West is Mike and Susie;
West is where I love,
West is refugees' home.
06 After the Flood (11:28)
Continuing the story, humanity stumbles -
gone is the glory, there's a far distant rumble.
The clouds have gathered and exploded now:
axes shattered, there is no North or South.
Far off, the ice is foundering slowly,
the ice is turning to water,
the ice is turning to water.
The water rushes over all
cities crash in the mighty wave;
the final man is very small,
plunging in for his final bathe.
This is the ending of the beginning,
this is the beginning of the end,
middle of the middle, mid-point, end and start:
the first peak rises, forces the waves apart.
Far off, the ice is now re-forming:
poles are fixed once more,
water's receding, like death-blood.
And when the water falls again,
all is dead and nobody lives.
And then he said:
'Every step appears to be
the unavoidable consequence of the preceding one,
and in the end there beckons more and more clearly
total annihilation'
This is the ending of the beginning,
this is the beginning of the end,
And when the water falls again,
all is dead and nobody lives.
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Other reviews
By hobbit1
The Van Der Graaf Generator are one of the most important groups of the progressive rock movement that emerged in the early Seventies, not very famous but with a particular and highly recognizable style.
The whole is once again dominated by Hammill’s exceptional voice with its continuous tone variations, which imprints the true imprint, the VDGG brand, that dramatic, epic, decadent, and melancholic sound.
By caesar666
Hammill’s lyrics indeed often venture into necrophilic and horrific themes, a legacy of his love for the gothic storytelling of authors such as Poe and Lovecraft.
The gothic and delirious 'feeling', alternating with quieter and more intimate moments, has always hypnotized me and made the music of these grooves unforgettable.
