Van Der Graaf Generator

Still Life / Vital ESOTERIC. Delirious contortions, delicious confections. Devious melodies.

Van der Graaf Generator – led by the multifaceted, often perturbing Peter Hammill, ‘the Hendrix of the Voice’ – always were much darker, way more focused yet simultaneously more freeflowing than their progressiverock contemporaries. There again, Hammill never viewed VdGG as prog.

In places, 1976’s Still Life

(8/10) shivers with malice. David Jackson’s turbulent saxophones provide little to no relief to Hammill’s grandiose literary visions and incredible range of vocals on La Rossa. The following My Room (Waiting For Wonderland), with its playful (ish) call-and-response warbling, is eight minutes of cossetted sweet relief. It was VdGG’s second after their re-formation in ’75, and remains a main highlight.

In comparison, the live double album Vital (9/10) is full-on emergent punk/prog, influencing the more out-there outer reaches of both. The 14-minute medley that closes disc one sounds like a direct forefather of King Gizzard’s more focused ravings. In places this is akin to Hawkwind in their acid derangement, or perhaps the unrelenting miasma of prime King Crismon. Hammill is in hyper-fierce mood as he pummels his way across Ship Of Fools and Mirror Images, instruments and percussion wailing in his wake. Rarely does rock sound this impassioned, this brutal, this scarily powerful, as it does on Door, Hammill not holding back his voice one iota.

Both albums have been remastered from the original tapes, and have fully restored artwork. The former is available on vinyl, the latter on double CD and LP.