THE QUIET ZONE / THE PLEASURE DOME

The reconfigured Van Der Graaf - no Generator this time - came about with the exit of Hugh Banton and David Jackson from the band lineup (though Jackson sneakily guests on The Sphinx In The Face here, and would soon rejoin as a full member for the Vital live album). Peter Hammill took this as an opportunity to reconfigure and update the band's sound, incorporating the New Wave influences that he'd toyed with to a certain extent on Nadir's Big Chance and Over, increasing his own use of electric guitar, and bringing in Graham Smith from String- Driven Thing on violin.

The result is a true breath of fresh air, a VdG configuration more than capable of holding its own in the punkish days of 1977 - the seeds of the furiously aggressive Vital album were sown here. Though Hammill would eventually decide to move on as a solo artist, the experiments on this disc would inform his solo work for many of the coming years, and whilst the band's turbulent lineup issues would cause the Van der Graaf name to be mothballed, it's material like this which allowed Hammill to stick to a defiantly experimental course over the New Wave years rather than succumbing to the wave of commercialisation other top-flight prog artists of the era did. Don't come expecting long epics or lots of keyboard and saxophone, but do come expecting tense, nervous energy and wild redefinitions of what prog could be.

Fantastic listening for almost all prog fans, unless you're absolutely not interested in prog bands incorporating punk/New Wave ideas into their musical arsenal.