Saturday, February 19, 2022

The 1981 Listening Post - Peter Hammill - Sitting Targets

 Peter Hammill - Sitting Targets


#236

June 15 1981

Peter Hammill

Sitting Targets

Genre: Experimental Rock

4 out of 5 (I can’t believe I typed that)



Highlights:

My Experience

Sitting Targets



I have never liked anything Hammier has put out that we’ve covered. This is our 4th go round with the guy from Van Der Graff Generator. But…it’s not those records.

It’s like if you told Peter he had to sit in a room and not only listen to only David Bowie and Peter Gabriel but he had to take notes, write down his thoughts, listen, locked in a room, to nothing else, for 72 hours and then IMMEDIATELY write a record. 

That’s Sitting Targets. 

Peter comes across as honest and confessional and…dare I say, earnest, through his particular filter. “Ophelia” is as lovely as anything he’s ever put out but the jolt is how it seamlessly buts up against the synthetic drums and dystopian anger of “Empress’s Clothes”, a discordance most welcome.

It all leads up to the Side Two opener title track, an epic by experimental music standards, “Sitting Targets” is paranoid and assertive and quirky and terrorized and terrifying. 


https://music.apple.com/us/album/sitting-targets/714647337

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