Van der Graaf Generator lynchpin Peter Hammill has taken inspiration from the unlikely figure of pop colossus Taylor Swift in his decision to re-record two of his Engima Records releases. In A Foreign Town (1998) and Out Of Water (2000) had been unavailable for some time until the new versions arrived on November 24 via Esoteric.
“Earlier last year, I was in the process of sorting out the copyrights that I still owned from Fie! Records,” says Hammill, “and it became clear that there was a dispute about the ownership of these two albums, because they were made for Enigma in the States. It wasn’t clear whether that ownership had passed on to various other people along the way or not. So I decided to take a leaf out of Taylor Swift’s book and do my versions by completely re-recording them.”
