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Peter Hammill - Sonix

Artist:	Peter Hammill
Title:	Sonix
Label:	Fie! 9114
Length(s):	60 minutes
Year(s) of release:	1996
Month of review:	01/1997

Line up

Peter Hammill - almost everything, save
Violin and Viola on 1, 2, 5 and 9 by Stuart Gordon and
Percussion on 6 by Manny Elias.

Tracks

1)	Emmene-moi Bare Theme	2.29
2)	A Walk In The Dark	1.55
3)	In The Polish House	4.49
4)	Dark Matter	6.58
5)	Hospital Silence	2.34
6)	Four To The Floor	9.36
7)	Exercise For Louis	2.49
8)	Labyrinthine Dreams	26.25
9)	Emmene-moi Full Theme	2.29

Summary

Read on.

The music

What a beautiful cover. I like it even better than Fireships. Anyway, this is Peter Hammill with various material written for ballet and soundtracks and what not. As he says so himself, the music has a "family resemblance to the music on Loops and Reels". Almost no singing he advertises on the CD. Hmm, why would he do that?

Lots of feedback and ethereal guitars in the line of the Soundscapes CD of Fripp on the first track. Dark and noisy. Only in the fourth track did I notice that we went from one song to the other. This Dark Matter track is in fact kind of dark, almost claustrophobic. As PH calls it: Improvisation snared by the Loop. Not really what normal people would call music, but a few people do really like this sort of dark, scary music based on free guitar playing. What do you know, I'm one of them!

Hospital Silence is more or less in the vein of the first tracks and was also meant for the same soundtrack. Four to the Floor contains some experimentations that I did not really enjoy, in this case I mean the white noise present in some of the parts. The track is nice however, with percussion by Elias and some vocal sounds in the back.

As is mostly with the tracks on this album, the presence of a violin on a track usually means that the music is more accessible than if not. Exercise for Louis is a repetitive track, but not as estranging as the rest. On the whole a ponderous piece, but not too dark and unapproachable.

The by far longest track on this album has mostly piano. Being meant for ballet this is not a very dark piece, although the tempo is low. On this track I think PH can be heard mostly like himself. It reminds me most of all of Steve Reich (the piano thing) and as such can be called minimalistic like in the old days with tape loops and more such. There are also some vocals and they are more or less in the Fireships line or for instance the closer of Roaring Forties (Your Tall Ship) One of the few tracks that can be called "beautiful" on this album with a very good almost longing melody. The vocal part is a little melodramatic, but it is forgiven.

The album closes with Gordons sad violin.

Conclusion

You might have noticed by now that it is hard for PH to do something wrong with me (okay, The Noise and In a Foreign Town are not among my favourites), but when he starts experimenting I'm all ears. As it is, being a fan of PH is probably not enough to warrant a buy of this album, because it is so unlike him (the Song is not here), but if you are charmed by for instance the solo material of one mr. Robert Fripp you would do well to go and have yourself a listen. On the whole I'd rank RF a little higher, because of the unstructuredness and pure experimental contents of this album. Like PH says: "None of this stuff is exactly comfortable" and indeed

Jur