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All-encompassing and assuredly eccentric, Peter Hammill’s solo catalogue is almost too vast to be contained. This expansive box set does a pretty fine job of tackling at least part of it.
It contains every record he made as a solo artist between 1971’s Fool’s Mate and 1986’s Virgin Records swansong And Close As This, with a huge amount of bonus material, BBC sessions, fresh remixes of two pointedly revolutionary classics, and a gorgeous 78-page hardback book.
This 183-song extravaganza might seem overwhelming to the uninitiated. It captures Hammill’s fascinating musical story as it unfolds like a sustained series of genre-less revelations and smartly-crafted curveballs. It’s as progressive as hell, of course, but also utterly unique.
A precocious talent from an early age, he was making music by his 20s that instinctively challenged pop and rock orthodoxies. Echoing the equally impressive Van der Graaf Generator catalogue (which has already received similar lavish treatment via 2021’s The Charisma Years set), his early solo albums have lost none of their obtuse magic.
From the highly evolved singer-songwriter experiments of Chameleon In The Shadow Of The Night and its talismanic centrepiece Easy To Slip Away, to the often unhinged darkness and depths of 1974’s In Camera (made when he was only 25), Hammill’s approach was always fearless and rooted in a profound desire to create something that did not exist anywhere else.
Five decades on, the likes of the genuinely terrifying Gog from In Camera and the entirety of 1975’s Nadir’s Big Chance – which accidentally presaged punk with its uproarious clatter – had very little to do with progressive rock and everything to do with his restless, inquisitive musical brain.
In the midst of 1977’s punk explosion, he released Over, arguably the bleakest break-up album ever made. Two years later, as prog slinked away into commercial ignominy, he made pH7, an often bewitching amalgam of simple songwriting and post-punk angularity.
Stephen W Tayler’s contemporary remixes of that and its audacious follow-up A Black Box are this set’s crown jewels: wonderful but wayward cult gems, deftly reinvigorated for modern ears.
As Hammill sideways-shuffled into the 80s, he battled with new technologies and changing tastes; but the avowedly peculiar Sitting Targets and ornate near-hit And Close As This harbour some of his finest-ever songs.
Despite sounding a little dated in parts, they’re still resolutely charming, challenging and strange. Much like the man himself.
The Charisma & Virgin Recordings 1971 – 1986 is on sale now via UMC.
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