Product Details
Chameleon in The Shadow of Night

Chameleon in The Shadow of Night
Peter Hammill

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Track Listing

  1. German Overalls
  2. Slender Threads
  3. Rock and R�
  4. In the End
  5. What's It Worth
  6. Easy to Slip Away
  7. Dropping the Torch
  8. (In the) Black Room/Tower

Product Details

  • Amazon Sales Rank: #255321 in Music
  • Released on: 1990-08-20
  • Number of discs: 1
  • Format: Import

Customer Reviews

The album that turned me on to Peter Hammill's solo work5
I remember when I first bought this CD (back in 1990) being blown away on my first listening and it still rates as one of my all time most played albums.

Most of this album is very minimal - Hammill on Guitar or Piano plus vocals. This is how Hammill plays most of his stuff live, and this bare bones approach "Skeletons of Songs" as he referred to it in 1978 (?) really suits this work - allowing his voice to shine through. My personal favourite track is "In The End"....

Really a Van Der Graaf album5
As the album starts you think, OK, Peter Hammill solo. "German Overalls", "Slender Threads", yeah, pretty good - usual sort of singer/songwriter angst.

But then - "Rock and Role". What's that NOISE - aagh! It's the ultimate Band - Van Der Graaf Generator in everything but name... HUGE riffs, THUNDERING drums, great chorus!

Then we drift back into Hammill Solo mode until "(In the) Black Room...", just terrific "I'm thinking about thinking but it didn't really get me very far..."

Now, wind the clock forward by a Century or so, and listen to the wonderful "Real Time" (2005 Live concert by VDGG) - and what do we find?

A brilliant reinterpretation of "The Black Room"... bliss!

A folky Hammill4
This is Hammill's second solo-album released in 1973. It is a bit a-typical because some songs have a distant folky atmosphere that is certainly not present on his other releases.
As with every Hammill-album, it contains classics like "In the End" and "Rock and Role" as well as the beautiful "Easy Just to Slip Away" but also a few songs that don't really work for me (like "German Overalls". Overall, a very good but not great album compared to the rest of his fabulous oeuvre.