Author: Peter Podbrežnik
Artist: Hammill, Peter
Label: Charisma Records
Release: 1974
Runtime: 47:34
Rating: 5/5
“In Camera” was the fourth solo outing to come out of the brain of the brilliant singer, composer and writer Peter Hammill, who made his name as the frontman of the legendary progressive rock band Van Der Graaf Generator. The album was made while Hammill had ‘hung up’ Van Der Graaf Generator for two years and his solo career truly blossomed with a run of excellent records. With the sonic perfection and great production, handled personally by Hammill as usual and definitely ahead of its time, it’s kind of hard to believe the album was recorded with extremely basic studio gear.
All the keyboards, led by the Mellotron, harmonium, ARP 2600 synthesizer and piano, were played by Hammill himself. Same goes for all the guitar and bass parts. Right around this time he started honing his guitar chops and, besides acoustic guitar, took up the electric more actively too. On two tracks he’s joined by an old buddy, longtime Van Der Graaf Generator drummer Guy Evans, while on the epic closing piece, over 17 minutes long, percussion comes from longtime friends and collaborators: original Van Der Graaf Generator drummer Chris Judge Smith (who left the band not long after Evans showed up, before the first album came out in 1969) and cover artist and graphic designer Paul Whitehead, who illustrated some of the most famous VDGG and Genesis covers.
The mood of the album is, no surprises there, extremely dark, gothic and post-apocalyptic, at times even claustrophobic. In other words, it’s Hammill at his most recognizable and at his best, which means that stylistically it’s not far from what he usually did with Van Der Graaf Generator. The lyrics are post-apocalyptic to match, with plenty of biting social satire, dark visions and clever metaphors, plus all the other always welcome ingredients of typical Hammill poetry, which earned him a reputation as one of the sharpest lyric crafters in prog rock.
The relatively calm opener “Ferret and Featherbird”, where Hammill, backed by lovely arrangements on acoustic guitar and piano, shows up in one of his lighter, more melancholic guises, is a bit of a decoy, because the album gets darker from track to track, as if it were edging closer and closer to the final circle of Dante’s Inferno. The mysterious and slightly menacing “(No More) the Sub Mariner”, which is about the irrevocable end of all youthful fantasies and has a nod in the title to the famous Marvel superhero, Prince Namor, mercilessly tips the album’s mood into dark waters. Hammill’s vocals are chilling and furious this time, while the claustrophobic atmosphere is deepened by the inventive accompaniment of the ARP 2600 synthesizer.
The bouncy, energetic “Tapeworm” is a great chance for the doctor of post-apocalypse to show off, with punchy guitar phrases, the tricks he’s learned on the electric guitar. Evans’ relentless drum fills add some VDGG charm to this great track, while the operatic vocal harmonies even sound slightly Queen-ish. The dark atmosphere that pervades the album loses its wings for a moment with the lovely ballad “Again”, where Hammill, with calm singing and a moving melody on acoustic guitar, creates one of his best personal, confessional compositions. For a fitting contrast and a return to the depths of the remains of a collapsed, decadent civilization, the listener gets hit over the head with a hammer once more by the phenomenal “Faint-Heart and the Sermon”, where he gradually builds and escalates a tense mood. He especially shines with some gothic Mellotron arrangements and, as always, with outstanding singing, switching emotional states faster than a chameleon changes colors. In the closing part he conjures up a truly epic, grandiose atmosphere of the kind typical of most VDGG creations. The apocalyptic, Nostradamus-style vision of “The Comet, The Course, The Tail” has all the ingredients that made Hammill one of the most striking British musical visionaries. Gothic-melancholic arrangements on acoustic guitar are accompanied by astonishingly versatile singing and lyrics that practically spell out a death sentence for modern civilization as we know it.
The peak of the album, without a shadow of a doubt, is the demonic two-part suite “Gog” and “Magog”, which he also played live several times with VDGG. The two parts are usually joined into the hellish 17-minute-plus epic “Gog Magog (In Bromine Chambers)”, which is certainly one of the most terrifying compositions in the history of rock. In the intensity of its demonic mood it can easily stand shoulder to shoulder with King Crimson’s ‘devil summoning’ piece “Devil’s Triangle (originally Mars)”. Gog and Magog, by the way, are biblical mythological figures, most often depicted as demons from hell. The epic ride through infernal rapids is demonic and claustrophobic to the tenth power and is definitely not for the faint of heart or fragile of spirit. Hammill’s vocal performance is unbelievably brutal and frenzied, even by his usual standards. Numerous avant-garde synthesizer effects, especially in the second part, “Magog””, which is stylistically almost entirely geared toward musique concrete, help throw open the doors to the last circle of Dante’s Inferno, home of the ruler of demons. He would no doubt gladly appoint Hammill and his VDGG pals as his court musicians.
“In Camera” is one of Hammill’s darkest and, for that very reason, best solo records, with such a hellish atmosphere that walking on hot coals feels like child’s play. The compositional style, and with it the nature of most of the pieces on the album, as well as the improvement in his guitar technique, especially his electric guitar playing, were surely among the main reasons for the revival of Van Der Graaf Generator in 1975. The great workaholic and chameleon, meanwhile, had already begun making plans for his next solo album, on which he would noticeably change his compositional style and, among other things, win over the hearts of the punk generation.
Lineup
Peter Hammill – vocals, guitar, bass guitar, piano, harmonium, ARP 2600 synthesizer, Mellotron
Guy Evans – drums on 3 and 7
Chris Judge Smith – percussion, backing vocals on 8
Paul Whitehead – percussion on 8
Production
Peter Hammill
Track List
1. Ferret and Featherbird
2. (No More) the Sub-mariner
3. Tapeworm
4. Again
5. Faint-Heart and the Sermon
6. The Comet, the Course, the Tail
7. Gog
8. Magog (in Bromine Chambers)
7 and 8 are usually joined into a single track
