Incoherence is an album by Peter Hammill

Peter Hammill

Peter Joseph Andrew Hammill is an English singer-songwriter, and a founding member of the progressive rock band Van der Graaf Generator. Most noted for his vocal abilities, his main instruments are guitar and piano...

, released on his Fie! label in March 2004. Incoherence is a concept album

Concept album

In music, a concept album is an album that is "unified by a theme, which can be instrumental, compositional, narrative, or lyrical." Commonly, concept albums tend to incorporate preconceived musical or lyrical ideas rather than being improvised or composed in the studio, with all songs contributing...

 about language, containing 14 tracks with soft transitions between them. The album was produced and played by Hammill himself, with contributions from Stuart Gordon on violin and David Jackson

David Jackson (rock musician)

David Nicholas George Jackson , nicknamed Jaxon, is a British progressive rock saxophonist, flautist, and composer. He is best known for his work with the band Van der Graaf Generator and his work in Music and Disability...

 on flute and saxes. Incoherence is recognized by critics as ambitious and one of Hammill's major works.

Production and instrumentation

Incoherence is Hammill's fourth (either with Van der Graaf Generator or solo) long piece of music with continuous transitions between sections which can be identified as single songs. At 41 minutes, however, it is twice as long as the earlier examples, "A Plague of Lighthouse-Keepers"

Pawn Hearts

Pawn Hearts is the fourth album by English progressive rock band Van der Graaf Generator, released in October 1971. The album reached number 1 on Italian album charts.-Differences between the European and North American releases:...

 (1971 with Van der Graaf Generator

Van der Graaf Generator

Van der Graaf Generator are an English progressive rock band, formed in 1967 in Manchester. They were the first act signed to Charisma Records. The band achieved considerable success in Italy during the 1970s...

), "Flight"

A Black Box

A Black Box is an album by Peter Hammill, originally released on S-Type Records in August 1980.Hammill performed nearly all the instrumentation himself, including the drum parts, a task he had first undertaken on his previous album pH7...

 (1980) and "A Headlong Stretch" (1994).

Musically, the 14 sections vary widely from calm, harmonic songs to difficult and highly demanding sections, tied together by Hammill’s unusual voice, a focus on keyboards and the concept of the album: language.

Incoherence was produced in Hammill's studio Terra Incognita in Wiltshire

Wiltshire

Wiltshire is a ceremonial county in South West England. It is landlocked and borders the counties of Dorset, Somerset, Hampshire, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire. It contains the unitary authority of Swindon and covers...

 between March and September 2003. Hammill completed the mixing of the album just two days before he suffered a heart attack in December, 2003.

The instrumentation of Incoherence is complex and symphonic, but never overdone and leaving some rather simple musical structures, mainly in the beginning and the end. Beneath keyboards in classical as well as in processed forms, Hammill used guitars, backing vocals and some overdubs by the violins of Stuart Gordon and the saxophones of David Jackson. This kind of instrumentation was Hammill’s main form of producing since the 1990s, but this time with an even higher level of complexity and without the use of drums.

Lyrics

In Incoherence Hammill discusses the contradictions and shortcomings of language, given that "our capacities for communication and comprehension define us both socially and personally". In multi-levelled ways the words of this album describe the "incoherent" use and the impossibilities of words. It has been argued that Peter Hammill referenced the infamous Iraq speech of Tony Blair

Tony Blair

Anthony Charles Lynton Blair is a former British Labour Party politician who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2 May 1997 to 27 June 2007. He was the Member of Parliament for Sedgefield from 1983 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007...

.

Cover

The cover, designed by Paul Ridout, shows corroded and burnt surfaces with lines of text. Folded out, the booklet contains a tower built with the lines of the songs of Incoherence, a reference to the Tower of Babel

Tower of Babel

The Tower of Babel , according to the Book of Genesis, was an enormous tower built in the plain of Shinar .According to the biblical account, a united humanity of the generations following the Great Flood, speaking a single language and migrating from the east, came to the land of Shinar, where...

.

Reception

Critics received Incoherence favourably, speaking of a "major work, challenging pop's conventional limits yet again" (The Independent), being "Hammill's most ambitious undertaking since 'Flight', and representing a high mark in the man's artistic creativity" (Allmusic). However, it was pointed out that Incoherence "demands absorption throughout time and repeated listens" (Maelstrom).

Track listing

All songs written by Peter Hammill.

1. "When Language Corrodes" – 2:46
2. "Babel" – 4:36
3. "Logodaedalus" – 2:18
4. "Like Perfume" – 1:32
5. "Your Word" – 1:09
6. "Always & A Day" – 2:08
7. "Cretans Always Lie" – 3:25
8. "All Greek" – 4:14
9. "Call That A Conversation?" – 3:13
10. "The Meanings Changed" – 1:57
11. "Converse" – 2:09
12. "Gone Ahead" – 5:39
13. "Power Of Speech" – 2:41
14. "If Language Explodes" – 3:46

Personnel

• Peter Hammill
• Stuart Gordon - violins
• David Jackson
  David Jackson (rock musician)
  David Nicholas George Jackson , nicknamed Jaxon, is a British progressive rock saxophonist, flautist, and composer. He is best known for his work with the band Van der Graaf Generator and his work in Music and Disability...
  
  - saxophones, flutes