Peter Hammill and Guy Evans in 1988's Spur of the Moment [flac temporary]

 

Well, here's a guy who needs no introduction as they love to introduce the famous...

This is I suppose improvised given the title, but the music is really truly interesting, not too abstract, with enough to hold on to make it well worth listening to. It's such a surprised given it came out in the year 1988. You can see that in addition to the VDGG people, a composer called Paul Ridout contributed compositions. Since the super useful internet archive is down for the moment, hopefully not permanently (shut down by one of our billionaire overlord kings, perhaps Elon himself personally ordered it?), I'll like youtube which has everything almost anyways but less accessible in general, link for this one here. I love the dramatic sound to it.

This album for sure takes over from The Long Hello, Vol. 4 stuff but is far far more thoughtfully complex. At times, like the description, it is indeed experimental, information here.

Another track I appreciated, called An Imagined Brother youtubed in link.

Nic Potter from The Long Hello, VDGG

 

From discogs:

Profile: Bassist, composer and painter. 

Born on October 18, 1951, in Wiltshire, England.

Died on January 16, 2013 in London, England.

Nic was in the Vol. 2 which was perhaps the least successful of the series, setting aside the last one-- sorry to put it that way straight off.

The music on these post-1970s albums is quite libraryish. There are keyboards, little of any other instruments, no guitarwork, and most compositions seem a little underdeveloped.

From Mountain Music, 1984, the Morning Suite:

Sketches in Sound (1986) and Self-Contained (1987) follow along the same lines basically. So it's like the Long Hello stuff from later but more monochromatic.

"The Long Hello" Part 2

What a shame that for Vol. 4 above, they gave up on the surreal and bizarrely creepy cover with the surfing ghost in the top right, in favour of the simple blue beach photo for the cd release-- but how typical.

As I said last time the first installment is by far the best of the lot.

Vol. 2 from 1981 sadly is taken up by library-style simplistic instrumental music with pretty conventional melodies but here's Welcombe Month (composed by Evans):

From the Vol. 3, one of the few standouts is a vocal track which is unusual (sung by later King Crimson vocalist Jakszyk) called Sogno D'Oro cowritten with David Jackson:

On the Vol. 4 there is far more progressive material, surprisingly for such a late year (1983). 

For ex., Der Traum von Julius is a track written by British composer Giles Perring:

So vol. 4 is well worth hearing and digesting thoroughly.

The later Gentlemen Prefer Blues album (1986) unfort. reverts back to more simple music.

Best song, and wonderfully experimental again, is The Main Slide, written by Evans:

"The Long Hello" from 1974 Part 1

 

This was the band behind Peter Hammill in VDGG, for the most part, as per discogs:

The Long Hello first started in 1973 as a one-off project of Van Der Graaf Generator bandmates David Jackson (sax and flute player), Guy Evans (percussionist) & organist Hugh Banton, supported by friends Piero Messina, Ced Curtis and Nic Potter. In 1980 the name 'The Long Hello' re-emerged as the common title for several other albums by these ex VdGG members separately. In total, 4 albums were released :

The Long Hello (volume 1) by Jackson, Evans and Banton

The Long Hello Volume Two by Nic Potter and Guy Evans

The Long Hello Volume Three by David Jackson

The Long Hello Volume Four by Guy Evans and David Jackson

It turns out there was a fifth one though called Gentlemen Prefer Blues, listed here.

In any case the first one was by far the best, though the fourth being more experimental definitely has some worth.

I always loved The O Flat Sessions with its eerie and atmospheric mystery, note that this track was written by Italian guitarist P. Messina:

His other composition on here is Fairhazel Gardens which is also quite lovely with its odd chord progression:

Left Lane in Common from 1985 UK, requesting flac

 

From discogs:

Words from Peter Mayer:

Talking about albums from waaaay back, we are excited to announce that an album I recorded with my brother Jim, Roger Guth, and a wonderful pianist, Ray Kennedy, is going to be released in March on CD in Japan, for distribution across the globe.

The album is called “In Common” and it was released in 1985 under the group name Left Lane. This album contains music that was the earliest release (besides a cassette called “To and From”) from Jim, Roger and me.

The music has jazz roots in its harmonic and melodic sense, heavily influenced by musicians such as Pat Metheny and some of the Jazz fusion artists of that time period.

It was released just several years before Roger, Jim and I went on to form the group PM and signed a record deal with Warner Bros. records.

I'll post the mp3 briefly here, but a commenter was looking for lossless, I thought I'd put this here in case anyone has it.

It's new to me and quite interesting, mostly to me at least reminiscent of the vocal tracks from famous prog-fusion band UK, with the efforts at writing inventive song structures and interesting chord changes but on an early 80s digital keyboards basis. The title track gives you an idea of the Pat Metheny reference, but note the nice attempt at writing poetic lyrics too: