PAWN HEARTS

Thanks to the Archives is how I first came across VAN DER GRAAF GENERATOR whatsoever by discovering a brand new world of musical amazement and eternal progressive appreciation. My first encounter with this English band was through the excerpt streams available over this wonderful site that has given me the opportunity to grow both musically and spiritually. In the beginning the eeriness of the sound and darkness of the lyrics blew my mind surprisingly just to the point where I devoted myself to put hands on VDGG's most recommended album by my fellow progholes which I eventually did by getting "Pawn Hearts". And you know what? I found out you can never go wrong with VDGG.

As I pointed out just now and out of first spin of the record on my player, I ended up feeling quite shocked and somehow intrigued because of what I listened to on "Pawn Hearts". The rare sounds and their evolution happened to make sense to me in this unease way that only forced me to play the record over and over again. The effect was clear; the music seeped in my system through my skin. Up to this day and after almost five years of lending ears to VDGG for the first time ever, I find it hard to describe their work, to label the sound of the music and to detail a proper close feeling of what I witness every time I break the air with the notes of this masterpiece.

What I could recognize right away were the notes of the sweet Mellotron, the Hammond organ, the delish flute and the unmistakable slide guitar and some others which are still unrevealed to me like the psychedelic razor and the tympani. My prog school so far was based upon the breakthrough bands that among others narrowed down my perspective to certain points of departure until VDGG appeared in my life. Being used to listen to PINK FLOYD, GENESIS and MARILLION most of the time, left me little material to stand a decent comparison and decided to enjoy only instead like I started to do with "Man- Erg". A top-class suite perfectly unfitted to Peter HAMMILL's mood and arranged in a way that even when the instrumentation goes messy you still can find sense through this contradictory warp of self- pointing lyrics and killer passages on every metals section to which I humbly take my hat off, believing David JACKSON's work is certainly impeccable. Unarguably my favorite song in "Pawn Hearts" and possibly one of my all time top prog songs.

The dissonant quietness of the record is one of the most appealing pointers to me since even though it floats among murky passages and foggy, deep lyrics it breaks that haze of uncertain with a very unique wit, showing nothing but purity and fine crafted displays behind every single instrument.

A very disturbing album that you'd surely find excellent. "Pawn Hearts" is unpretentious but amazing at the same time. Yet another chapter in Prog history to understand the whole of our today's standing point in this contemporary universe from which I pulled down five stars to be set upon this work of lyrical art.