1983

Analogue Experiments 1980 - 1983

1. A Ritual Mask
2. Critical Mass
3. The Moebius Loop
4. An Endless breath
5. In Slow Time
6. My Pulse
7. The Bells! The Bells!

Peter Hammill - guitar, keyboards, vocals

Featuring music primarily created for film and dance works, Loops & Reels was the first of Peter Hammill's Sonix series and contained music recorded in a spirit of experimentation, outside the normal world of the song.

The album includes A Ritual Mask, Peter's astonishing contribution to the first, fund-raising, WOMAD record and the 16 minute atmospheric epic, My Pulse.

You don't remember all the things I've done;
you never catch the careful words I choose;
your present will not admit my patient efforts...
it's a labour of love
I offer to you.

Unselfishness, does that hold the space between us?
A helplessness, a nothing-left-to-prove?
A silence more eloquent than any passion?
It's a labour of love
I offer to you....
It's a gift of love.

Take this hand and you will hold its stories;
beat, the heart, and find the tell-tale truth;
take this gift: - receipt will give it value.
It's a labour of love
I offer to you,
it's a gift of love.

You don't remember all the things I've done;
you never catch the careful words I choose;
your present will not admit my patient efforts...
it's a labour of love
I offer to you.

Unselfishness, does that hold the space between us?
A helplessness, a nothing-left-to-prove?
A silence more eloquent than any passion?
It's a labour of love
I offer to you....
It's a gift of love.

Take this hand and you will hold its stories;
beat, the heart, and find the tell-tale truth;
take this gift: - receipt will give it value.
It's a labour of love
I offer to you,

He casts himself as an adventurer,
all foot on floor and hell for leather;
she never told him what he meant to her -
perhaps that's for the better.
She's never clearly seen dividing lines
between real life and parts she's chosen,
confuses character and rising sign,
sex and emotion.

She waits in the caravan
at the side of the set
for the scene with her leading man
that he'll not forget....

Things get crazy on location
and they had their little swing;
only yesterday he told her
that it didn't mean a thing.

The youth are voting with their feet,
such a shame that the dance-beat
gets so complicated.
Pretty, pretty it seems...
on second glance, the look is overrated.
In the hot-house there's a magic potion,
timeless motion....
Now and again now lasts forever;
jeunesse doree gilding the lily of pleasure.

The youth are voting with their clothes,
such a shame that the hip pose
is so calculated.
Round and round it goes:
how careless the rapture that's overstated.
In the picture lost devotion,
waveless ocean.
Time and again
style goes out of fashion;

Between coma and consciousness
no hard and fast line,
no chance to vote on the motioning eye.
A mystical vision or a fall from grace,
the chase in slow motion through alien space?
I don't know what to make of the dream-time:
it seems as though I'm me,
but I'm now more than ever
happening inside myself - I don't know
whether I need anything else.

Stored information or secretive clue,
so much will fit the design....
one field of life where free will
won't cut through:
the dream and the unconscious eye,
in real time.

We surf between waking

She likes to keep God out of church,
especially when she prays:
all in its place, all safely stored
for some rogation day....
the paradox is so apparent,
the sense absurd, but all too real;
the nonsense is arrant
but she just wants to feel comfortable.

A pound in the collection-box,
a name-plate by the aisle;
she always wears a hat,
for He'll appreciate the style.
Pays no attention to the sermon,
Christ in himself has no appeal,
the social custom is the turn-on
and she just wants to feel comfortable.

Treading not on her illusions,

A system in the making,
self-healing for the blind,
sitting in the waiting-room
of the patient mind;
raging at the illness
when the rage may be its cause,
the purpose of the will is lost
in the search for an escape clause.

Fatal convalescence,
the wound becomes a weal;
the poison is in essence just
the virus of the real.
But there's sympathetic healing,
the power of the soul bandages,
concealing all that we can't control.

Waiting for the doctor to come.

A system in the making,
self-healing for the blind,
sitting in the waiting-room

The album was released in 1983 on Naive Records, a label founded by Gordian Troeller, the former manager of Van der Graaf Generator. It was the second album to feature the collective known as the K Group — Peter Hammill(k), Guy Evans (Brain), John Ellis (Fury) and Nic Potter(Mozart).

1. Labour of Love
2. Film Noir

Drawing back the curtains,
sluggish city daylight in the afternoon...
here's that special silence,
Just before you walk out of the hotel room.
Each time we're so close I assume
that we'll never be again.
Oh, how long can we pretend
that we're just good friends?

A casual affair is all that you can spare
from your emotional change;
a calendar of meetings,
strangers on the street
the best we ever arrange.
Now I just can't stand all the pain,
all the constant make and mend:
how long must we pretend
that we're just good friends?

I gave you my devotion,