Peter Hammill: In Camera (1974)

In 1974 you sure didn’t have to wait long for Peter Hammill to dish us another solo album. He first gave us The Silent Corner and the Empty Stage, which is essentially a Van der Graaf Generator album because Hugh Banton, Guy Evans, and David Jackson all appeared on that album. Several months later comes In Camera, certainly one of the high-points of his solo career, and one of the finest albums ever in the world of Hammill/VdGG. Hard to believe, given the high standards he gave himself for his previous outing! Here he gets help from Guy Evans (VdGG), Chris Judge Smith (early VdGG member, pre-Aerosol Grey Machine), Paul Whitehead (album cover artist, most known for Genesis and VdGG album covers), and David Hentschel (Trident Studio engineer, future Genesis producer, and the guy who played that monster ARP 2500 synthesizer on Elton John’s “Funeral For a Friend”). Peter Hammill handles the vocals, piano, harmonium, guitars, and Mellotron, David Hentschel the ARP synth (I presume the monster 2500, as I hear sounds the ARP 2600 couldn’t do), and the rest do drums and percussion. Well, what distinguishes In Camera from a VdGG album is the lack of organ and sax, which was the class VdGG trademark. But don’t worry, this album is just as great as the best of VdGG. First off, we have “Ferret & Featherbird”, a nice largely acoustic piece that has a slight country feel. “(No More) the Sub-Mariner” is a fantastic piece done in that dramatic style you expect from this guy. David Hentschel also lays it on thick with his synthesizer, with great pulsing sounds too. Then you get the intense and rocking “Tapeworm”, with Guy Evans at the drums. I really love how this song simply rocks, then in the middle of nowhere, he experiments with Gentle Giant-like vocal harmonies for a short bit, before returning the song the way it started. “Again” is a short acoustic ballad that leads to the epic “Faint-Heart & the Sermon”. Wonderful piece with great majestic Mellotron passages as well as wonderful synth passages. I also hear some strange ARP 2500 synth effects to go as well. “The Comet, the Course, the Tail” is an acoustic piece but with a rocking quality that leads up to “Gog”. This is a piece dominated by harmonium, and it’s a very dark and sinster piece. Then comes the last piece, “Magog (In Bromine Chambers)”, this seems to be the fast forward piece for many listeners, after all it sounds like self-indulgent noise, several minutes of nothing but distortion and feedback. Personally I have no problem with it, it really trips me out, but I can understand if you don’t dig this part. Regardless, it’s something so outrageous that it’s completely out of the question on any given VdGG album (or any of Hammill’s other solo albums). This album is so good that you can even forgive “Magog (In Bromine Chambers)”, it really shows during that 1972 to 1975 VdGG hiatus that Peter Hammill had plenty to offer still, and this album simply displays that for all. Of course, not for everyone, if you’re not up to Peter Hammill’s melodramatic style and gloom and doom lyrics, his solo albums as well as VdGG would probably not be up your alley. But for me, this is simply one of the greats of Hammill’s career, and a classic, in my book.