van der graaf generator live

Legendary underground band Van Der Graaf Generator returned to their roots at the Academy; a place where founding members had met for the first time way back in 1967 whilst studying at Manchester University. They reformed in 2005 after an almost thirty-year absence, and have been nothing short of prolific ever since; three new studio albums, one of which was a two disc set, and two double live albums, multiple tours of the UK, Europe and a trip to America too, and with their latest album, A Grounding in Numbers, actually charting on its release a couple of weeks ago, it seems that these sixty-somethings are more popular than ever!

The standing-only venue was totally packed, the stage compact to say the least. The last couple of times Van Der Graaf played Manchester they were at the Bridgewater Hall and the Royal National College of Music respectively, but this was a far more intimate and indeed – brutal - setting as they were so bloody loud that the bass drum, at a range of about ten feet from me, felt like a punch in the sternum!

The trio consists of vocalist and songwriter Peter Hammill, who switches between playing guitars and keyboards throughout the set. Drummer Guy Evans, a hulking figure who broods menacingly at the back of the stage, delivering incredible drum patterns with astonishing precision, from delicate cymbal flourishes to near-blastbeat intensity, and the keyboard virtuoso Hugh Banton plays organ. Not just any organ mind, as he built church organs for a living, he uses twin-layered keyboards with heavily modded electronics, capable of the most brutal sonic assault, and to keep his feet busy while both hands are hurtling around, he also plays a vast array of bass pedals too. To see him in action is a truly dazzling sight!

The opening track was Interference Patterns, a belligerently complicated song about the Michelson-Morley experiment of 1887 which kick started modern physics. Hammill and Banton play counterpointal riffs at each other which only meet every other bar, creating a virtual third riff, before it explodes into a frenetic climax.

Mr Sands from the latest album is next, a reference to the code word that signifies a fire in a theatre without having to actually shout "Fire" and alarm everyone. It too bounces along with complex rhythms and intricately weaved riffs that turn decidedly menacing half way through.

Hammill jokes with the crowd that's "two hurdles down" but it's his own fault for writing such complex and challenging songs in the first place, never mind starting the set with them! Things slow down a tad for the stunning new album opener Your Time Starts Now.

The old favourite Scorched Earth, from 1975's GodBluff album, proves one of the heaviest numbers of the night (there was once a rumour that Entombed were going to cover this tune!) and standing in front of that bass drum made my trousers flap like I was in a wind tunnel.

The brutality of the drums proved too much for Hammill's lyric sheets, as they were repeatedly shaken loose from the music stand onto his keyboard.

Switching to guitars, he tore through the new track Bunsho, with some full-on powerchords roaring away, before the more sedate Lifetime allowed the audience a moment of respite, the quiet in the eye of the storm if you will, before they turned up the distortion and played the decidedly metal All That Before. A newer song about the perils of memory-loss associated with growing older, with its ultra-heavy moments, this is a highlight, and despite their reputation as a bleak depressing band, the lyrical content on this decidedly tragic subject matter is very funny; "I wish that I could pin things down, before they escape me. I can't find my car keys and it seems that lately, I have trouble even fitting them into the front door...or did I say all that before?"

Next up was an absolutely amazing rendition of the classic Still Life. Hammill's voice every bit as powerful, haunting and astonishing in its range of octaves as when he first recorded it as the title track of an album back in 1976!

Hammill returned to his keyboard for the harpsichord doom goth-rock of another new song, All Over the Place, with its stunning climax, and it was played to perfection by a band that is really on fire at the moment. They went straight into the epic Over the Hill, with its sweeping mood changes, and then We are Not Here, both from 2008's Trisector.

Promising to finish with an old one, we got the superb Man ERG from 1971's Pawn Hearts album, perhaps my favourite song of all time, with its fragile first few verses of beautiful piano chords lulling you into a false sense of security, before the jarring percussive distortion kicks in, and they launched into the brutally grinding pedal-tone assault, as Hammill screams like a madman. The song lurches from delicacy to uncompromisingly raw mayhem, before climaxing with the most stunning percussive chord phrasings ever played outside a classical orchestra.

To rapturous applause they returned for an intense encore of the 1976 track La Rossa, with Peter Hammill in particularly unpredictable form on the guitar.

Overall it was an incredibly intense - and very loud - performance, which saw four songs from their new album bedding in well with the existing material. For a band that has such an extensive back catalogue, they are certainly in no danger of becoming a cliché churning out endless "best of" gigs, as they only played four of their "classic" tracks. Despite the labelling of being prog-rock dinosaurs, they are certainly a relevant and contemporary band. And yet they remain one of the best kept secrets of underground English rock music!

Even forty three years after their debut, they are still as unpredictable and volatile a live act as ever, and this was simply one of the best gigs I've seen - since their last one!

by Steven Hargraves