Audio CD review:
Peter Hammill - Sitting Targets

Peter Hammill - Sitting Targets

Band: Peter Hammill Title: Sitting Targets Rating: Release Date: 1990-08-30 Media: Audio CD Tracks: 1: Breakthrough 2: My Experience 3: Ophelia 4: Empress's Clothes 5: Glue 6: Hesitation 7: Sitting Targets 8: Stranger Still 9: Sign 10: What I Did 11: Central Hotel

The end of the "MODERN ERA" Many Hammill fans will dissagree and rightfully so , but to this end we find a means! After "A Black Box PH finds himself with a record company that is willing to support him again after the end of Charisma! "Break Through" has a stamp of "Games without frontiers" to it. It is sept 2007 first week and virgin and mr Hammill have enhanced and re-mastered this fine record !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"Sitting Targets" marks the end of the first and only real Peter Hammill era, that began with "Fools Mate" and ends with this lp. "Glue" was actually a 45 b/w "My experience", great little cover featuring a good looking Peter. "Sign" also a great acustic track and my personel favorite is "What I DID" !!!!!!!!!!! Great bass on that one! even "Ophelia" is very nice! "Stranger still" a classic that has seen many a live show! Like a said the end of that special period , ok lets say 77-81 ,a great period in time , the last real peter hammill album ever made! Cover also catches the feeling of the times 1981. New Romantics did rule but Peter Hammill stayed competly on top of things as always!. PH's poppy record Those records were sparse and shockingly in your face, at least for that era. Peter Hammill released a series of pretty good solo records in the late seventies and early eighties, his most notable, at least for this listener, being "PH7", "Future Now", and "A Black Box". He out-punked the punks without being punk. "Sitting Targets" was an interesting record because it was a bit more slick than the the previous records and the songs had a denser mix. The songs are pretty good, especially "Ophelia", the almost danceable "My Experience", and "Stranger Still". I still play this one from time to time, and recommend it to anyone wishing to give PH a try. LOST IN THE MIDDLE Instead of album titles, albums tend to use a track title. In what must be Hammill's "middle period", somewhere between "Chameleon" and "What, Now", some interesting tendencies begin to surface. Odd, that, because this naming style imparts such a different feel to whatever is summarized under the title. In this case, the title song, "Sitting Targets", is yet another call to personal responsibility, condensed in scale and scope to fit a "songs" format. The metaphors here and throughout the album seem simple and take on a surface gloss: the road is life, the car is an isolating shell, even if we think we're safe, we really aren't, etc. , etc. The music has a terrific, home studio sound: raw, unpolished with wildly tweaked EQ. The playing is adequate, but never informed by the extremes of his earlier work. And now, something interesting happens, at least to my perception of Hammill's style. From the perspective of his very recent work, the early solo work was bathed in deeper degrees of abstraction and what seemed to be earnest, raw emotion in the vocal delivery. Here the writing and singing begin to sound less earnest and more theatrical. Meaning that over-the-top, heavy technique demanded by the traditional theatre. Practiced for effect, and telegraphed rather than inferred. The style that once seemed intrinsic and authentic, now seems heavily rehearsed and staged. All this transmits a tangible degree of brittleness and artificiality to the whole experience. There are some terrific riffs, some beguiling instrumental and vocal processing and treatments - Hammill's "Sonix" perhaps begin this period, but that's a whole different subject. "Sitting Targets" is in many ways a very worthwhile recording. Compared to most of the catalog here on Amazon, I'd take it in a heartbeat. Compared with Hammill's own library, it's simply a transitional step. Enough to say that what once came from the heart here comes from the mind, and many many times the heart has proven to be the wiser. Metal Hammill It was in Tel Aviv, 1985, and all us in the audience - not more than 300 - laughed with him. "And now, for my big hit!" pronounced Hammill and smiled, before he played "Sitting targets" (the song). Hammill and hits? get outa here!! Anyway,"Sitting targets" is a metal album, that probably influenced by Gary Numan, and other artists of the late 70s. Synthesizers and drum machines took some of the humanity of Hammill. I missed the piano, the drum and the bass guitar. Only the saxes of David Jackson were around in a few songs. But still - listen to the gentle "Ophelia" and "Stranger still". The remarkable description of crisis between lovers in "My experience" and "Sitting targets", and the desperation in "What i did". Hammill was always great in painting sad pictures from everybody's life or nightmares. All the people who read his lyrics, find themselves there. This is Hammill, and "Sitting targets" is another good album of his. Accesible gem from Hammill If you like Hammill's other stuff, you will definitely like this one. This is one of the most accesible Hammill records, with Master Jaxon on sax, and evans on drums. Also try Hammill's Patience. You can see a complete list of all Peter Hammill discography, or go back to the Peter Hammill tabs