van der graaf generator a grounding in numbers

Released: 14 March 2011 Label: Esoteric Records

Unbelievably still sounding fresh, challenging, and weird, Van Der Graaf Generator's twelfth studio album is as different to all the previous releases as they are to each other. Since the band first put out their largely acoustic debut in 1968 they have always dodged conventions, indulged in musical experimentation, and delivered mesmerizingly powerful songs with astoundingly good lyrics.

Practically every one of VdGG's contemporaries – if even still alive - if even still in the music business - are doing "best of" tours that are little more than cabaret acts, yet this lot are still pushing the boundaries with new material.

They are currently a trio, comprising Peter Hammill on guitar, piano and keyboards. Virtuoso organist Hugh Banton, who also plays ten string bass here, and the sublime Guy Evans, laying down insane drum patterns.

There are so many musical ideas and fragmentary pieces on A Grounding in Numbers, that most contemporary bands who think they are doing something new with two riffs and a bridge in a three minute song, need to wake up to themselves and realise that this trio of near-pensioners has more creativity, vitality and class in the 49 minutes and thirteen tracks here than 99% of bands have in their entire careers.

Musically we have harpsichord gothic doom metal - soul jazz mathematics - morbid arpeggiations of chromatic pedal-tone organ - funky prog riff groove dirges - and a foot tapping 80's rock chorus on Highly Strung, where a Dsus4 chord is used to great effect. Thematically we have songs on topics like the passage of time - Euler's analytic mathematics - a take on a piece of Japanese literature - and theatrical metaphor par excellence in the superbly bonkers Mr Sands.

For aficionados A Grounding in Numbers is instantly noticeable in having more individual tracks than any other VdGG release. Back in the 70's just three or four songs would suffice. But these tracks bleed into each other, creating a coherent whole, suggesting a much longer singular piece of music. There are so many ideas jostling for place that they run through most songs in a few minutes. Gone are the days of the classic four-piece building riffs around a single chord pattern into a heady crescendo of ten minute workouts, brilliant though they were.

Opener Your Time Starts Now is a comparatively gentle keyboard piece, and would be more reminiscent of Hammill's solo style, were it not for the layered ascending key changes and trademark sweeps of Hugh Banton's organ soaring above the chorus.

Mathematics is a bit more challenging, looser, jazzier, and not exactly a foot tapper. Although the outro is mesmeric, and the subject matter, Euler's Identity, voted best mathematical equation ever, is something only a band as singularly original as VdGG would ever attempt, featuring a "chorus" and I use the term loosely, of the phrase "e to the power of i times pi plus one is zero, e to the power of i times pi is minus one," and they get away with it! Musically, we are on Interference Patterns territory, as the trio excels in quirky offbeat time signatures that exploit the classic Van Der Graaf style of chromatic pedal-tone riffs, which are aggressive and edgy.

Highly Strung is an out an out rock track, but with a challenging amorphous verse, capped off with a storming chorus! The bass guitar is excellent on this, although sometimes lost in the frenetic mix of drums and choppy lead rhythm.

Red Baron is a brief drum-based instrumental that leads straight into the guitar-heavy Bunsho, with Hammill combining distorted pull-off / hammer-on riffs with arpeggations through the verse, before exploding into a full-on Pete Townsend-esque descending powerchord windmills.

Throw in an off-key stop start chromatic riff, and you have a very unusual song that is typical VdGG. This is a superb track, and the lyric concerns the Ryunosuke Akutagawa short story about an artist who finds his best work discarded by the public, yet his most mediocre dashed-off eulogy is lauded as a masterpiece. Dry humour perhaps, from a band that has never achieved the recognition that they deserved!

Key-heavy and somewhat jaunty for this VdGG is Snake Oil, a cautious ode on the conmen who sell anything from religion to homeopathy and other quack nonsense. It too though has moments of menace but is leavened by its catchiness.

I was gutted that Splink was an instrumental, as I was hoping a lyricist of Hammill's genius could explain better than Jon Pertwee how to cross the road, but it boasts a superbly sinister gothic harpsichord. (If you are under 35 ask a grown-up what SPLINK stands for!)

Embarrassing Kid is a bit of an odd track, full of off-kilter guitar riffage. It gets quickly forgotten when the brilliantly doleful Medusa begins though. A simple but devastatingly desolate piece, that is truly haunting. The harpsichord that elaborates after the first verse add a brilliant ambience, as the bass plays ornamental notes around the insistent guitar chords which plod drearily along, underpinning the downbeat tune. Despite its deadpan bleakness, the lyric, "what you see it what you get, from her" is blackly humorous considering the song title!

The final track, All Over the Place is a potential classic Van Der Graaf tune that I hope gets an airing on their forthcoming tour. It boasts a gloriously typical VdGG riff, apocalyptic final chord passages, and it even refuses to have the conformity of a traditional ending, cutting the last iteration short, leaving the listener hanging on in unresolved tension. Brilliant!

Its not an album that catches you immediately, few records of genuine longevity are, but each successive replay rewards the listener. It's as if the audience has to "solve" the music at times. Its not that it is deliberately elitist of course, just that the band are a trio of 60+ year old guys who are in it for the sake of creating the music itself. "Fresh eccentricity" to quote the lyric of All Over the Place.

There literally is so much going on, it's almost impossible to take it all in, it without putting in the hours both lyrically and musically. Some of it will appeal instantly; the chorus of Highly Strung for instance, while other parts take time to grow - but the overall point is; wow! What an ambitious eclectic ensemble of musical styles, subject matters and themes.

Quite simply put, this is still another groundbreaking release from a band that shames almost the entire music industry for its utter lack of thought, passion, creativity and musical ability.

Producer Hugh Padgham has given the recordings a fabulous gloss in mixing the album; this sounds awesome played through bass heavy speakers. (It works intimately too on headphones - but as a metaller I appreciate VOLUME!)

It's not the anarchic violent brilliance of 1975's Godbluff - or the calculated psychotic /psychedelic danger of 1971's Pawn Hearts - but it *is* Van der Graaf Generator for the 21st Century. If they did recycle their earlier material – their die-hard fans would probably not complain and still lap it up - but the members of the band themselves would probably get bored!

It's clearly not going to be to everyone's taste - but listening to some of the dark, edgy organ riffs, and twisted guitar phrasing on here you can see why members of Cathedral, Radiohead and Voivod, cite Van Der Graaf as an influence, and they are without doubt one of the very few living bands that are truly legendary.

A whole review and nobody mentioned John Lydon... Oops.. D'oh!

by Steven Hargraves