If Peter Hammill has taught us anything over the years, it’s that his songs should always be regarded as works in progress. With an astonishing number of solo albums under his septuagenarian belt already, not to mention the entire Van der Graaf Generator catalogue, prog’s most prolific rebel has little to prove. Instinctively focused on whatever his wayward creative urges will do next, he has rarely looked backwards, preferring instead to let old songs grow and mutate through live performance.
These new, re-recorded and reworked versions of two mid-period classics travel along similar lines, as Hammill gently hauls some of his most polarising work into the 21st century. Released in 1988 and 1990 respectively, In A Foreign Town and Out Of Water are hardly outliers in the Hammill discography, but thanks to the influence of what was then new technology, both suffered from a certain sonic inelegance. With clunky drum machines and chintzy synth sounds proving a distraction from the brilliance of the songs themselves.
