A GROUNDING IN NUMBERS

Having just stumbled upon this album a couple of hours after it was released, I quickly snapped it up on iTunes. I was thrilled that I had been able to skip the anticipation, as I had heard rumblings of a new album, but had no idea of a release date.

I will get the comparisons out of the way first, as it is nearly impossible to consider this album without setting it next to VdGG's previous effort, Trisector - these are the only two albums to feature the version of Van der Graaf with just Hammill, Banton and Evans and for awhile, Trisector was the only representative of the potential of their 21st century sound without David Jackson. Trisector felt as if the band were still writing classic-style VdGG songs but simply without the saxophone/flute and therefore the sound of the album felt somewhat incomplete. Not terrible mind you, but just slightly lacking in their adjustment to their new format. I only realized that, however, after listening to A Grounding in Numbers.

This album has a much better hold on the trio format and fills out the sound rather nicely, leaning on Peter Hammill's guitar often, though not quite as overtly as on Trisector (though the album even moves to a guitar/bass/drums format on "Highly Strung" and "Embarrassing Kid"). There is a little more texture to the way the songs are presented and little touches of sonic fiddling that make effective transitions between the numerous songs on the album - a format that beautifully suits the modern version of the band. At 13 tracks and no song longer than 6 minutes, A Grounding in Numbers bares little resemblance in format to the band's much-lauded Pawn Hearts, nor should it. The ideas come quickly on the album and then depart again before they have a chance to become tired - many of the tracks on here are under 3 minutes! Perhaps it's because they are no longer concerned with providing a bedrock for the Jackson's saxophone to vamp over and realize that much of the potency of their ideas in this incarnation only last for so long. In fact, there's nary a solo to be found on the record - Banton and Evans instead, as always, provide an often-jagged architecture for Hammill's voice to occupy.

The album is held together with sort of a loose theme of mathematics (indeed, one chorus is "P to the power of i times Pi plus one is zero", while another is "5 5 3 3 double 2 3", making explicit the quirky time signature on display), and it still all somehow sounds menacing and convincing coming through Hammill's vocals - reminiscent, actually, of their foray into science on Trisector's "Interference Patterns." Not that many tracks explicitly deal with the theme, but it does give the impression of some grand design within the inner workings of the album.

This is VdGG in fine form and the fact that they are still putting out albums of this quality when they could be (rightly so), resting upon their impressive laurels is quite a boon to all fans of the band. It is absolutely in your best interest to check out this album - it speaks a lot to a necessary modernization of prog. This album doesn't sound like a band 40+ years into its career; it gets back to the spirit of the genre rather than emulating its forebears - fewer long, sprawling songs and more of just having fun picking apart music and putting it back together in strange configurations.