You may have passed time in happier ways,
but there are other mountains to climb:
you've never lived as you're living today -
now is the time!
2002
The Goldberg Variations - mp3
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THE GOLDBERG VARIATIONS Johann Sebastian Bach Hugh Banton, organ |
The entire album - 2 mp3 tracks wrapped in a 50Mb zip file - can be securely purchased and downloaded online from Hugh Banton mp3 shop
Buy the complete recording for £6.49 via PayPal or credit card using the button above.
You can download the free cover art here.
According to legend J.S. Bach wrote The Goldberg Variations in 1740 as a commission for Count Keyserlingk, former Russian envoy to the court of Saxony.
Originally written for two-manual harpsichord, the work very naturally transposes to the organ, and the tonal possibilities of this multi-keyboard instrument add a clarity to the two-part and three-part counterpoint not always evident in more familiar renditions.
The work starts and ends with an Aria, to which the 30 variations are linked by bass-line and harmony alone - in effect thirty very individual pieces.
Listen to the demo tracks...
Sea Of Memory
6:47 minutes (7.79 MB)
Premiata Forneria Marconi Live In Japan 2002 was released in both a 2 CD and DVD edition. The 2 CD edition contains 2 new studio tracks including a collaboration with Peter Hammill who wrote English lyrics and sings Sea of Memory.
The Sea of Memory
If only we remembered
as much as we forget....
The past’s a distant ocean
we can’t go back to yet.
We wait down in the valley
and till the soil by hand
feeling the weight of water
built up behind the dam.
Left and right, up and down, head over heels
that’s the only way that we know
We Are Written
3:58 minutes (5.45 MB)
"It was always going to be like this, whatever you bring yourself
to say. Why don't you point that thing the other way and telescope
this tangled story? You've got the whole thing at your fingertips,
already scripted in an alien Braille, snagged up under your
fingernails."
Oh, so blissful, in ignorance we pin the tail, with smudgy marks
we scratch the surface. We are what we were born to be, we are what
we become over time, under our own thumbs. We are written in our
fingerprints, in everything we do and see; we are written in our
The Thin Man sings Ballads
Skinny
Nobody knows what she sees, no-one can get behind that warped
reflection. What glossy varnish strips away protection from young girls like these? No-one admits what it means, no-one permits a gesture of contrition; how carelessly they stacked the ammunition in the magazines. Like a gun to her head, skinny model fantasy.
No, she just can't bear to live with this body image.
Who knows what she sees? Who knows what she sees in body image?
Just a Child
This is more than merely wrong, as sin on sin's grotesquely piled. Don't look so surprised when you find yourself reviled. Don't look to me for comfort in your trial - the girl was just a child. Uttering remorse with weasel words and shameless guile... it was "a mistake", no, paedophilia's "not your style"; all's undercut by your crookedness of smile - the girl was just a child. Close to being grown up, occasionally wild, but the girl was just a child, the girl was just a child.
This is the Fall
All humans are siblings, this is a truth that I've assumed; all fighting over the legacy of a lifelong and timeless family feud in the name of I don't know what. I don't believe in God but if I did I'd surely say there is only one Power up above us, one face refracted in each different Faith.
But for every holy confessor there's a priest of self-worth trading in the eternal for power on earth.
The Ice Hotel
Mercury's down to zero, absolute time will tell we're only over-wintering
as guests in the Ice Hotel. All that we build will crumble, every empire
fades; humbled, we should admit impermanence marks the man-made. Under the Ice Hotel the permafrost is stacked but down along the walls the first melt starts to track. The wind's whipped voices up and swept them down the years but in the Ice Hotel the guests all have cloth ears. Are we all so cloth-eared?
Once you called me
I wish that I remembered better. You've grown so fast before my very
eyes. The woman that you're now becoming suddenly takes me by surprise.
I thought that there'd be time and tide a-plenty to grow into a proper
fatherhood but underneath our feet the sands were shifting. You spread
your wings, soon you'll be gone from me for good. And when I tucked you
in at night and swore I'd always love you madly I'd wonder would this
be the last time that you'd ever call me "Daddy"?
A bittersweetnes runs through every memory: a daughter's father wants to
