The Union Chapel Concert

Guy Evans & Peter Hammill

1. Fireworks
2. A Forest of Pronouns
3. Anatol's proposal
4. After the Show
5. Roger and Out
6. Accidents
7. Soundbeam medley
8. Women of Ireland
9. Ship of Fools
10. Hamburg Station
11. Seven Wonders
12. Barber's Adagio for strings
13. Red Shift
14. Lemmings*
15. Traintime

* "one-off reformation" of Van der Graaf Generator.

Peter Hammill: vocals, guitar, keyboards
Guy Evans: drums, percussion, MIDI pads & samples, blue drums
Hugh Banton: organ
David Jackson: flute, saxes, soundbeam
Stuart Gordon: violin
Manny Elias: drums
Giles Perrin: guitar, blue drums (Echo City)
Mat Fraser: blue drums (Echo City)
Patou Soult: percussion, blue drums (Echo City)

Produced by Evans & Hammill
Recorded live at the Union Chapel, London,
on November the 3rd 1996 Live mixed by Paul Ridout
Mastering by Peter Hammill at Terra Incognita
Cover by Ridart
© 1977 Evans & Hammill

Release Notes
When the Union Chapel offered me an evening to do whatever I wanted, I immediately suggested a duo gig with Peter. I'd been very intrigued by our earlier forays into non-direction and it had been a while since we'd caught up with each other. This time I thought I'd take things a stager further and hi-jack bits of his existing recordings into my own instrumental arsenal via a sampler. Peter would then play and sing to improvise re-arrangements made from authentic components.

Peter (naturally) rose to this barely veiled gauntlet and came up with his list of starting concepts - radicalism, minimal personal, responsibility, high-risk and fun, to which I added, seldom performed material, psychedelic guitar and plenty of sonics.

…Two R&D sessions at Terra Incognita produced samples, proto-versions of songs and the idea of contributions from other musicians we each work with.

At an early stage, I suggested that Hugh Banton should play the Father Willis pipe organ. Once Hugh was on board it was unthinkable not to have David. They would each play a solo section and guest, on a couple of other pieces. There could be no ducking the issue. We now had to deal with that V*** moment but avoid all its potential horrors (grisly time-warp event, those trousers etc.) Various panic inducing suggestions for material eventually boiled down to 'Lemmings' as the piece containing all the classic elements and great to play.

Hugh immediately declared this the most technologically difficult song to reproduce - his MIDI bass pedals would have to be modified to play an authentic bass pulse. He would have to build a fuzz-box. He would start straightaway. David meanwhile decide to go ahead with a long planned total re-build of his system, banking on being able to finish it in time for the gig. So as the day drew closer, Hugh and David were feverishly building gear, Peter was tucked away in Bath brushing up on riffs and I was in London sorting out stuff like PA and parking. This was definitely my moment of maximum deja-vu.

There then followed a surreal period as Peter rehearsed with Manny and Stuart in Bath and I rehearsed with Giles, Mat and Patou in London. Our one chance to check the planned ensembles was a day-long run through on the Friday before the concert - no doubt a bizarre experience for guests musicians as they struggled to guess where sections they had worked on would actually turn up. A great deal of faith was demanded and given.

From the stage the gig itself was over in a flash. We are left with this record - a real official bootleg courtesy of a couple of PZM mics and a DAT machine which I rigged minutes before going on. To many ears it captures all the warm energy of the evening along with some of those rare moments when an invisible hand takes over to propel music to a wild an beautiful edge.

Guy Evans

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