Honeybeefarminginkarnataka

PH > Fireships

Golden Hind, Rough Trade 1992 / Fie!

I Will Find You

Curtains

His Best Girl

Oasis

Incomplete Surrender

Fireships

Given Time

Reprise (Hammill eDavid Lord)

Gaia

tracks by Peter Hammill

Produced by David Lord and PH

Registered between November 1990 and August 1991 by:

Peter Hammill: vocals, guitar, keyboards

David Lord: keyboards

David Jackson saxophone, flute

Nic Potter: bass Stuart

Gordon: violin

John Ellis: guitar

There is no definitive album of Peter Hammill or a disk that can be defined as complete or exhaustive. There's a shortcut: PH is an investigator and his jewels are scattered among all jobs. However, there are more refined and better produced album, and Fireships is definitely one of those.

Fireships has one producer (David Lord), is unusual for a musician as artisan Hammill, who is accustomed to working in the home studio (the Sofa Sound) and then finish the job with employees trusted long time. In many ways

Fireships wants to be a recapitulation important in the career of Hammill. It is the first album to come out to his record label, the newly Fie! (from the letter of the greek ph), boasts an orchestral arrangement and very accurate. He has curated a cover instead of the usual black and white photography. From the liner notes is also the first record of a newly formed series BeCalm , while the next job will be the first of the series A Loud . In fact Peter has always been from the trilogy progressive alternating slow ballads for piano or acoustic guitar to rock songs inspired by new wave, sometimes with the same hard, sometimes slower disks ( The Love Songs, And Close As This ) or more lively ( Enter K, Sitting Targets, Skin ). The purpose of officially separating the two cores will not last long: apart from a couple of anthologies of the Virgin, you will not hear more about Calm and Loud , even though the record industry in the years to come will be generally more calm that loud.

Perhaps precisely because of the richness of the arrangements Fireships is an enjoyable disc, although it can be called anything but commercial. It is really amazing that a disk so slow as to be sometimes almost motionless or stunned (His Best Girl or Given Time ) manages to be catchy.

I Will Find You is actually a slow catchy art rock vaguely Roxy Music, which could go on radio and in the live show will be applicant:

"We are writing in a sky crossed by the stars

music of soul remembers you ...

can run or hide, but surely

you try, I'll chase you, you'll find "

A applicant is another song in concert Curtains , the curtain closes on a love story that ends, a song slow and deep like a heavy curtain:

"Tommy got up that morning with rocks in the head

and Silvia was shocked

the story that had fake

was frozen on their lips ... ...

for Silvia and Tommy there was nothing left to prove

have raced for years

to find a way of life that offered

excitation "

His Best Girl is a piece of property even five minutes in his gait freezing electronic, while singing the words of a beautiful girl and icy image:

" In GTi Cabriolet to the villa in southern France Vacation

keep your head down baby, keep your golden curls

you'll always be his favorite girl "

Oasis proceeds winding up with an electronic rhythm that evoke echoes of Eastern odalisques veiled:

"Next to the swimming pool of clear water

powered by a secret spring

your lips are sealed but in the language of your body

angels sing ...

... tell me your secret name

oasis in a desert world "

Fireships is a symphonic piece, evoking the war fleets of ships, blazing, of the Armada anime, the Armada of the light.

"There is a curtain smoke on the horizon

ships that sail fire tonight

is the army of souls, the flotilla from God knows where ...

... we believe to be fireproof

never think it can be burned "

Given Time, the time allotted, it's a slow introspective song about death and the realization that Peter loves to sing quite often in his concerts:

"We make the lives we lead"

seems an extraordinary album, but the song that closes it is a beauty to put in the shade almost all the music that preceded it, an orchestral piece at the zenith while the splendid production of Hammill.

is Gaia, a symphonic piece on the world lives, and the connection of all events, the flutter of a butterfly in a hurricane

"Cry those tears and Then dry your eyes tired

every breath you take keeps you alive

butterflies are

properties in flight on a starry

but the ghosts flying on and on

in the sense that we all belong

Oh, Gaia

and the sum of all parts

is the heart that forgives everything

Gaia "

A song that I can not listen without feeling the chills every time.

tracks included in the live show: I Will Find You, Curtains, Given Time

Board for the purchase: one of the most beautiful album and finished PH. Even a good entry point to his music.

Reviewer's rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ½