Composer Reacts to Van Der Graaf Generator - The Sleepwalkers (REACTION & ANALYSIS)
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- čas přidán 10. 07. 2024
- Bryan reacts to and talks about his thoughts on The Sleepwalkers (Remastered 2021)
ORIGINAL VIDEO // • The Sleepwalkers (Rema...
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0:00 Intro
0:50 Reaction
11:24 Preface
12:12 Analysis - Sections Remind Me of Zappa & Gong
14:18 Analysis - Non-Jazzy Sax Performance
17:43 Analysis - Exploring the First Section
25:50 Analysis - Lot of Melodies
30:06 Analysis - The First Meter Shift
31:24 Analysis - Time Signature AND Tempo Shifts
34:33 Analysis - Song Pacing and ME
39:09 Analysis - The Changing Sax Sound
44:58 Analysis - Lyrical Dive
56:10 Analysis - Merging the Themes
1:01:56 Outro
It's funny - I was very surprised that your takeaway was "technicality for technicality's sake," which is so far from how I think of their music. To me, what defines Van Der Graaf's songwriting is the way you feel like Peter Hammill has just showed up to the studio at midnight to declaim a few pages of wild, passionate poetry from his notebooks, and the band has been tasked with somehow keeping up. Which is not to say that there isn't a certain technicality to it, but it's always felt very distinct from the "technicality-first" attitude of many of their prog contemporaries.
But hearing your analysis, I can also see how this track would come off as ultra-technical if you're approaching it from the angle of trying to break down its compositional features in realtime.
Some of Peter Hammill's more "technical" songs almost sound like rock operas in a way. "The Black Room" and "Louse is not a home" in particular. Like most of VDGG, the the lyrics are the most important thing but his solo stuff really emphasizes the tempo and time changes even more especially his 70s stuff. It all makes sense though as a whole.
This is my favorite VDDG album. I enjoyed your analysis. Thanks!
actually after 40 years it gets to sound as simple as a jingle.. and in a live setting (not necessarily a live recording) it blasts like a freakin' nuclear weapon.. boy when that riff kicks in and Hammill goes ballistic..
Hammill's growling vocals are what makes me love their stuff...My first VDGG album...Still Life is tie with it for greatness...
I think the odd time signatures may represent the nightmarish “dance” of the sleepwalkers. Four times the lyrics refer to them “dancing” “in step, with great precision”, “their arms and legs akimbo”. The words seem to suggest they are dancing against their will, like puppets. The “old cha-cha-cha” section suggests that the dance is sometimes comical, but the rest of the music suggests something much grimmer and darker.
Amazing album. For me ‘Arrow’ is the standout track. This one is killer, too.
Totally agree!!
Arrow is the most chilling song I have ever heard!
no, "killer" is a different one, lol
Yay! Van der Graaf! They’re the best. Van der Graaf and The Fall (and Hammill, of course).
The confusing technicality matches the lyrics as you have probably noticed.VdGG is one of the hardest bands to get into on first listen or even several listens since you have to absorb the complex music, vocals and lyrics all at once. If you want more technicality try the band Gentle Giant. You are so right about us all having a different threshold. To me Dream Theater takes technicality for technicality sake WAY too far and gets muddy to me. On the other hand I love ELP:-) JS Bach himself was called "too musical" by some of his contemporaries so it is not a new complaint. Nice thorough honest review. I hope you do more VdGG since their music can vary greatly. Ty!
You are a composer, right? And this is the first time you've ever heard Van der Graaf Generator? Peter Hammill is maybe the greatest lyricist in all of music. To grasp this (and all of Peter Hammill's music) one needs to be reading the lyrics while listening. Don't think you did that. No one will ever understand or fully grasp this music without understanding the lyrical content. With some/most other prog bands you can - but not with Van der Graaf Generator. The music and lyrics are intertwined. For this and other reasons this music should be explained when it is fully comprehended. First reactions are fruitless and inevitably futile. I'd love to hear what you think of this when you've learned it through and through. This is completely the opposite of technical for technical's sake. Really am surprised that you couldn't grasp that there was that certain something special waiting to be discovered. Van der Graaf is only beloved by those who put in a little extra effort to get what they are doing. Progressive music - the best prog takes multiple listens. I think you should know this. Don't forget - as you read the lyrics - this is an album - what came before this on this album has significance to this song. And - this is the last song of the album. The last sentence of the last song (The Sleepwalkers) - 'And soon my time has ended.' The last sentence of the first song of this album (The Undercover Man) is - 'And yet you still have time - you still have time.'
Peter Hammill is a very special case. Its strange to me that people initially don't like his voice. Its super inspiring to me especially whenever I hear the song Arrow from this album. My first listen was Man Erg in 2009. I knew I liked the song much like when I first heard Meshuggah in the 90s. I didn't really understand what was going on but kept listening to it over and over for months and now PH is my favorite singer/song writer ever. VDGG and Meshuggah are my favorite bands ever. Great things take time to digest.
@@h.p.dominocus Welcome to the fold - we fans make up for the lack of numbers with our abundance of passion!
@@vdggmouse9512 Can you recommend me an order/way to go through PH solo albums? I'm 35 yo and love Over, Patience and Enter K.
I've just come across this video and as a long time VdGG fan(atic) from 1971, I understand how hard it can be to listen to one of their pieces for the first time. Whenever a new album would come out, I would listen to it almost exclusively for a few weeks until I started to appreciate the songs. Whilst I used to analyse the songs harmonically, it wasn't until much later that I worked on analysing them rhythmically, and some of their songs are very confusing - as you noted. I suggest looking at the middle section of 'La Rossa' for something that sounds simple but is very confusing.
With regard to 'The sleepwalkers', my key to understanding the rhythms was the return of the verse section at the end (starting with the saxophone solo at 6:33). This section and verse is based on a 4/2/4/4 rhythm (some would call the entire phrase a bar in 14/4). The opening section is basically the same but is based on subdivisions of 3, making the phrase 6/3/6/6. This probably explains why you heard 9s and 12s. The cha-cha-cha section (typical VdGG humour that was rarely captured on disk) is in 3.
I wrote about this at length here (nbnewman.blogspot.com/2009/06/counting-beats-with-van-der-graaf.html) and here (nbnewman.blogspot.com/2020/03/counting-beats-with-van-der-graaf-2.html).
Back in the day, around 70/71 VDGG were one of my favourite live bands, saw them 6 or 7 times, never disappointed. There were no synths involved, David Jackson played Sax, flute and Oboe, he was also known for playing 2 Saxaphones at the same time. Another of my favourite live bands around that time was Audience that featured Keith Gemmell another muli instrumentalist, Sax, Oboe and Clarinet who also doubled up on the instruments. Friends, Friends, Friend is still one of my favourite albums of all time.
no oboe
how you play two at once? !
have never seen your lamp shut off. now i consider myself a real fan of yours
I guess my setup couldn't handle the full sound of VDGG 😅
VdGG are, IMO, the most underrated of the classic prog bands, somewhat understandably given that they were among the least accessible, the band least afraid of pushing into harshness and incomprehensibility. They took Floyd's soundscape artistry, mixed it with King Crimson's combination of modern jazz and classical influences and penchant for cataclysmic climaxes, the theatrical performance aspect of Genesis/Peter Gabriel, and finally took the keyboard-heavy (often with no-guitar) approach of ELP... and the result sounded completely and utterly original. I'm always amazed by how they conjure such darkness and heaviness without a guitar, distortion and often with very jazz-like drumming. This particular song is like a vaguely nightmarish carnival, and I love how it moves through such a variety of styles without sounding like a nonsensical mishmash.
Personally, I didn't get any ostentatious wankery from this. Maybe part of it is just my deep familiarity with 70s prog but this fits in well with the techniques and styles of that period and all its influences from the more adventurous strands of jazz and prog. If anything, I think classic prog (including VdGG) were most skilled in their ability to be technically complex while still making that complexity fit well with the composition and themes, and making it all sound good. My mind is rarely on the technical complexity when it comes to any classical prog, even with things I know are incredibly technically difficult (just imagining trying to play King Crimson's Fracture on guitar gives me anxiety sweats!). Like I said above, I think everything in this song fits well with the "dark carnival" vibe.
Like you I also have a love for words. Used to spend a lot of time writing poetry and even had a document dedicated to writing down interesting new words I encountered reading or via my Word of the Day subscriptions. I can say that you're quite honorificabilitudinitatibus, Bryan. :)
You're spot on about their sound. Despite it clearly being classic prog, it doesn't really sound like any one else and is a unique voice from the other bands I've explored from the era. The closest I could say would probably be YES but I'm also likely mixing a few different songs of theirs into a composite YES song 😅
As for the technical aspect, it's probably a side effect of listening critically rather than casually. I couldn't discern the reasoning behind some decisions through rationality so I jumped to wankery. Maybe a more casual listen would lead the song to feeling more cohesive. And with that in mind as a possibility, I need to keep those thoughts in check in the future.
Dude, I had to look up honorificabilitudinitatibus to see if it was real. What a interesting word with such a strange fascination around it (I dove into the idea of Baconianism surrounding it)
@@CriticalReactions I think on tracks where we disagree it's often because of a clash between the "analytical" and "casual listening" mindsets. I'm on record as saying I think casual listening is better for first (maybe even second) listening and I save the analytical stuff for later on if I'm really interested in understanding something on a deeper level.
I actually encountered that word when I read through all of Shakespeare's plays in my early 20s, and like most everyone had to look that word up and was surprised it had an entire Wiki page devoted to it! I used to have a "party trick" of actually being able to pronounce and then spell that word!
@@jonathanhenderson9422 Yup, think you're right about that. And when I'm checking stuff out on my own it's casual first, analytical later. Which is probably why many of my favorite albums aren't exceptionally complex musical but they mean a lot to me regardless. I'm really vibing with the emotions or lyrics they're throwing down and not caring much about them being slick or technical.
VdGG are not underrated in the slightest! They are hugely respected.
He did play a flute live occasionally, but mostly the wood wind lead was a soprano sax. He had two other saxs on stands and at times he was playing lead on soprano and rhythm on the other two saxs using his arms on the keys
I’d been trying to work out the time signature for a couple of days when I came across your video. Glad it wasn’t just me! I think the phrase “cryptic dance” in the lyrics is a nice way to describe the music itself.
Oh yeah, that's a perfect description of what's going on here :)
No guitar and no synth. Instrumentation is organ (with bass pedals), winds, electric piano, drums and voice.
you forget the clavinet
@@TrevRockOne Well, yes, I should have written Clavinet instead of "electric piano" 🙂
you forgot bass guitar it's only there for a short while
there is also guitar I think (where he says "interesting sound panning there") electric guitar is listed on the credits
electric guitar only a bit close to the end
Of all the great first gen prog bands VdGG took the longest for me to get into. Even longer than Gentle Giant. A lot of this is because you first have to deal with Peter Hammill in all his glory or the rest of it just doesn't matter. Then there's the fact that there's no dedicated guitar or bass player, which means their music is rarely "groove-y". They're very much a head-band, and require some work to cut through obtuseness of a first impression. And few people -- me included -- become fans right out the gate. It takes listen after listen after listen, so you just have to have faith that the time invested will eventually be rewarded. But when it finally clicks it's like a door opening to a brightly colored world. I especially appreciate Hammill, and understand his deep and wide-ranging influence on so many other singers and songwriters.
Such a fenomenal song! Do hope you"ll actually revisit this one and give yourself the chance to fully comprehend what a wonderful composition and performance it is. You're absolutely right that these kinda songs are impossible to appreciate more than at surface level from a first listen. I think that's the thing with us prog nerds, we get stoked when we realise there's so much more to discover.... Just like with most classical music.
A bit on the instruments:
The "flute" is not a synth to my ears,
possibly an oboe
That "spacey synth", pretty sure it's organ
Wood blocks - might as well be cow bells, hard to tell with certain tunings.
Great to hear a parallell between Dolly Parton and Van der Graaf Generator! (Although merely arround lyrical ideas) 😁 I've got another one for you: Lady Gaga used to have a warm up dance performance act (by Lady Starlight) to Van der Graaf Generator music!... czcams.com/video/YOgFzcx7Gtc/video.html
Great reaction and analysis. Again, do hope you"ll return to this song and this band. Very exciting stuff!
That Lady Gaga thing was interesting. I'm not quite sure what to make of it; very avant-garde arthouse performance.
I did check out the song again after the reaction. A lot still goes over my head but some things are starting to click for me. I'd wager it'll be a few more until I'm comfortable with the song as a whole.
Great comment and the whole Lady Starlight Masks thing kind of blew my mind 😮🎷🎹✌️
A lot of the 'prog' bands around this time featured Sax, other brass and woodwind instruments, Colosseum, Blodwyn Pig, King Crimson, VDGG, Audience to name a few.
The comments on here really warm my heart. So many of the approaches to VdGG match my own. Even the comment that perhaps PH was thinking of Hermann Broch's The Sleepwalkers is something that occurred to me when the album was released all those years ago. One of the great attractions on first listening to a new piece by PH or VdGG was/is that you will not be able to parse it, but have to submit and drown in it; and that is because it is intuitive - it comes from the intuition of Peter Hammill, and while it has its own logic, technical wankery is the very opposite of its character, and of the approach of the musicians who arrange the music and bring it to life. Those who get it and love it are quite used to being alone amongst their friends and family, for to 99% of listeners the music simply does not speak, or PH is too intense and extreme, and that is fine, we accept that. But it strikes a nerve when someone self-servingly uploads a video like this and then babbles in such a way that all he reveals is his own
limitations.
With VDGG you'll find that the vocalist (Peter Hammill) is the dominant songwriter. He mostly composes using a piano/keyboard or guitar, both acoustic & electric. I would imagine that Hammill develops the outline of the song, shaping the music closely to the lyrics he has developed. He probably works at an idea quite intensively to get the piece to 'work' as a whole. It may feature many twists and turns in keeping with the 'story'. This lyrical storytelling has become an essential aspect of Van Der Graaf's music and it is what shapes the form of any song rather than the band 'jamming' on some bluesy trope in order to fill up an album. One aspect I have noticed is that their music is often quite mimetic, basically keeping close to the lyrical idea being conveyed. Once Hammill presents the musical sketch to the others, they will then contribute to the song in keeping with the spirit of Hammill's idea. Within one song there may be a variety of related ideas (see, for instance, Lemmings which includes Cogs, from Pawn Hearts) but nearly always there is a mimetic aspect. I feel this is a crucial element in understanding what VDGG were/are all about.
your analysis is always the best. could not have said it better myself
As you examine music from the 60s and 70s, I want to remind you of an important but easily-overlooked fact:
From the 90s onward, the overall pacing of media has continually increased in speed and decreased in length.
We can talk about why (shortened attention spans, information density, etc), but the fact is: this has affected all of us, even older people. I'm 60.
This is true of movies, music, and even literature (there are very few doorstop novels written anymore, and even movies I LOVED as a kid feel SO SLOW today!)
For art rock especially, people in the 70s were expected to take the time to *soak* in the artist's creation, look for clues in album art, read every word of the liner notes, etc.
This long slow attentive immersive quality is rarely seen in 21st century art (or heard in music), and it can take some getting used to.
It lengthens that "gap" you speak of, between the crystalization of the musical idea & the time taken before we move on to the next one.
Excellently worded!
the "synth, maybe flute on the left channel" and the "spacey synth" at 5:45 is organ; no synth on this album and hardly any on any of their albums. ARP is listed on pawn hearts but only appears passingly. i thought synth was listed on world record but wikipedia says no....
also their near total avoidance of lead guitar has me considering a parallel universe where vdgg cover shine on you crazy diamond ? 🤔
@@newforestpixie5297 i like the idea
VDGG es tremenda banda
comentario en español!
Well, Peter Hammill has spent most of the past fifty years or so raging about time, and about how people waste it. So this is pretty much in touch with that. (I'm not quite sure he'd appreciate the Dolly Parton parallel though, ... 😆)
Yes, "time" is definitely the most prolific noun in Hammill's lyrics.
I think he would be quite amused. Despite darkness of his music, he seems quite a kindly and humorous person in real life.
Hammill doesn't read music; I think - in VdGG anyway - he wrote from the melody and let the group work out the time sig - he did something like that in a song called Gog, which seems to have no time sig at all, and where he had to conduct the others (according to some sleeve notes on his In Camera LP). I'm probably wrong on all this; but the way Guy Evans (drums) watches him while playing live suggests it as well.
You said that one passage reminded you of "The Girl from Ipanema", which is a samba. But that passage you listened to was a cha-cha-cha.
There is always a close relationship between lyrics and music with Van der Graaf Generator. It's never "technicality for technicality's sake".
My reading of the 9-beat part is 18/8 divided into 4 x 3/8 + 3 x 2/8, with that 3 x 2/8 cropping up on its own from time to time.
About spacing out the instruments, I don't know if you knew this when making the video, but there are just four people in the band. And the song sounds pretty much the same when the four play it live (on the album "Maida Vale"), without overdubbing. Also David Jaxon often plays two saxes at a time and Hugh Banton on hammond organ plays bass with the pedals. It sounds like a lot more than four people playing.
While i fully respect the composer's knowledge i feel i must ask "is there any worth in disecting music in this manner? Surely the sum total of this or any other song is more than the totalof the individual parts.
I agree that most art is greater than the sum of their parts. But understanding how the individual parts work and, more importantly, how they work together to achieve a great work of art can increase someone's appreciation of a work. This isn't true for everyone though and I appreciate that some people don't want the magic of the art "ruined" (as some might say).
@@CriticalReactions Respect.. What worries me is. that the completeness of the song or any piece of art can be surgically broken down to nothingness. At the end of the day a piece of musc is merely a collection of notes and intervals.......or is it!? For me the whole point is the spirit that the notes and intervals take on in the wholeness. Reminds me of a song sung by Peter Hammill " 4 pails " in which the singer initially suggests that a man is simply 4 pails of water and a bagfull of salts. This suggestion is then shown to be a nonsense. I suppose some people will enjoy finding out how the song was put together while others will prefer to enjoy it for what it is. Respect to you and your work.
In my books there are like maybe 20 albums worthy of the 5/5 mark in the world. Godbluff is one of them, though it sure as shit takes a while to sink in. The B-side is streets ahead.
Same, that's the one on my top 20 albums list. 4 indispensable songs on 2 sides. They were at the peak of their powers here.
I think there's no bass guitar in this record but bass pedals by the keyboard player Hugh Banton.
I *think* the keyboard player Hugh Banton plays bass guitar AND pedals on this record but ONLY bass pedals LIVE :)
@@prosoloist you're probably right. I wasn't sure. Thanks
At the end it was definitely bass guitar. Banton rarely picks up the bass guitar in concerts, but on the cover of the live album "Maida Vale" he can be seen playing one.
@@BaldJean he played b-guitar on arrow live; i dont recall if he played it on anything else maybe forsaken gardens?
@@koukouvania Definitely in "A Louse is Not a Home".
Our favorite bass pedal player is the German Barbara Dennerlein, by the way. Just watch this video.
czcams.com/video/tsW3V4rrRsw/video.html
Van Der Graaf songs get better and better with each listen once it all sinks in (in my opinion at least)
One of the most unique prog bands ever. Love the darkness and gothic overtones. You can easily hear how they have influenced a band such as Devil Doll (which you should check out as soon as possible). Peter Hammill's voice and ability to express emotions are just amazing. Btw "Van" is pronounced with an F and not a V as in Dutch.
never heard THAT one...and F and not a V? My world is turned upside down. 46 years I've been a Van of the Fan ...haha
As far as using the sax in less of a blues/jazz and more of a classical/rock/avant-garde vein, there are some other examples in the Van Der Graaf catalogue that I might have suggested over this one - "Childlike Faith in Childhood's End" and "Killer" come to mind in particular.
Regarding your query over why the restricted stereophonic soundscape was not decongested in the latest remastering. This may not have been a conscious decision to remain more faithful to the original, but instead it may have not been possible to alter this. The music is complex and presumably required many tracks - more than were available in multi-track tape machines of this era. So some recorded parts may have be mixed down to occupy a reduced number of tracks on the multi-track tape. Once this partial mix-down/"track bouncing" has been done, there is no longer the flexibly afterwards to work with elements inside these subgroups.
this is also the culmination of an album. the rest of the album isn't as dense as this.
Most of what you were calling a synth was simply an organ.
It is my 3rd favorite song from the album only because it feels a bit hectic, tracks 2 & 3 i also find fit great together
I suspect that you may have a breakthrough moment with VdGG or Hammill at some point. I was similarly sort of on the fence about them in 2004, hearing a few songs I liked and enjoying the sax and organ based arrangements which got fairly atonal sometimes, but put off by the seeming irregularity of the tunes sometimes. Having had my own breakthrough moment and listening to many many hours of VdGG/Hammill since then, the key in my understanding is the scan of the lyrics, which more often than not indicates the breaks in the metric pattern. Rather than prog, it can make sense to approach Hammill as a folk singer, with ‘crooked’ rhythms that offer a different kind of complexity and density than most of my ‘blueprint’ albums for 70s prog.
reminiscent of Jethro Tull Passion Play and Mistrel in the gallery
Great track from a great group. Favourite track from my favourite VDGG album.
More sax in prog rock: Lucky Seven from Chris Squire.
A one-time listen without lyrics will obviously produce this kind of groping.
Synthesizer?
This is a mistake. First listen should not be analytical. First listen should be a listen. Even if it's hard for a musician or composer not to analyze instinctively. As a bassist myself I am always attuned to picking out the bass and what is happening rhythmically. But first time around the music needs and deserves a holistic absorption. Then the analysis can follow after the full emotional journey has been assimilated. Because if you "get' Sleepwalkers, or indeed any Hammill/VdGG creation, then nothing would ever be considered as being on 'the cusp' of 'technical wankery'...
The artistry of VdGG is around the way the musical themes and movements interlace to near perfection with the transitions and progressions of the lyrics and their emotional experience.
Hi there, fellow VdGG traveler from the early days. Remember when we drove to the Thames Polytechnic in Woolwich at the end of October 75 to see them play this live? We heard the soundcheck of the cha-cha section whilst waiting outside.
Tempo all over the place? Could it be prog rock? Ha! Ha! The more listens, the better it gets. BTW - I think you'll find that what you thought was a flute, is a soprano sax. Not woodblocks - a cowbell. Some nice reverse saxophone at the end. This came out in the seventies, when it seems that people were prepared to commit themselves to their music for a greater length of time. Hammill's lyrics are some of the most enlightening words that have ever been committed to music.
It wasn't a flute . It was a soprano sax .
As with Mahler and Berlioz, serious music requires serious listening...
You really should have listened to this several times and had the lyrics as well.
Maybe then you would have realized that there is no guitar at all and that the synth is actually an organ. Other keyboards are used but definitely no synths.Oboe flute and various saxophones complete the mix.
The lyrical content really drives the changes in tempo and time signatures and that's what makes it so clever, but I don't agree that it ever gets over technical for the sake of it - as I just stated, all the changes are for a reason and effect tying the lyrics and music together in a unified form.
This is one of the most original songs in prog and demonstrates just how it should be done without descending into Dream Theatre style technical wankery and aimless noodling.
Likening Peter Hamills lyric to Dolly Parton is an interesting leap though !.
"spacy synth" - there is no synth on this track - HB is playing his custom Hammond all the way through.
"bass" - there is no bass on this track - HB is playing the organ's bass pedals.
"wood blocks" - there are no wood blocks on this track - Guy is playing a cowbell.
They are a very modest band within prog rock, dedicated to highlighting the vocalist above all. If it doesn't sound like it, it's probably because the vocalist and the lyrics they have to work with are too eccentric.
Please don't react or review any more Van Der Graaf. You're not qualified. You talk about syncopated snare hits where there are none (2.50). You don't seem to know the difference between an organ and a synth. You're listening to Prog rock and complaining about the metre being all over the place. You have no idea.
Will do, man. You don't find anymore VdGG on this channel from here on out.
One wonders if they were thinking of the great European novel by Hermann Broch, "The Sleepwalkers".
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sleepwalkers_(Broch_novel)
Great show and music.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sleepwalkers_(Koestler_book)