''Spur of the Moment'' is an album of

experimental music Experimental music is a general label for any music or music genre that pushes existing boundaries and genre definitions. Experimental compositional practice is defined broadly by exploratory sensibilities radically opposed to, and questioning of, ...

Peter Hammill Peter Joseph Andrew Hammill (born 5 November 1948) is an English musician and recording artist. He was a founder member of the progressive rock band Van der Graaf Generator. Best known as a singer/songwriter, he also plays guitar and piano and ...

and

Guy Evans Guy Randolph Evans (born 17 June 1947) is an English drummer and a member of the progressive rock band Van der Graaf Generator. Career Whilst at the University of Warwick (1965–68), Evans played in the university band which was called The ...

, originally released as

cassette tape The Compact Cassette or Musicassette (MC), also commonly called the tape cassette, cassette tape, audio cassette, or simply tape or cassette, is an analog magnetic tape recording format for audio recording and playback. Invented by Lou Ottens ...

on the Red Hot label. A remastered version was released on CD on the DaTE label in February 1988"Peter Hammill & Guy Evans – Spur Of The Moment (Cassette, Album) on Discogs".
''discogs.com.'' Retrieved: 12 August 2011. (not in 1991, a

suggests). The album is currently out of print.
''sofasound.com.'' Retrieved: 12 August 2011. Hammill plays the grand

piano The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keyboa ...

guitar The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected stri ...

and

keyboards Keyboard may refer to: Text input * Keyboard, part of a typewriter * Computer keyboard ** Keyboard layout, the software control of computer keyboards and their mapping ** Keyboard technology, computer keyboard hardware and firmware Music * Musi ...

driving samplers and

synthesizers A synthesizer (also spelled synthesiser) is an electronic musical instrument that generates audio signals. Synthesizers typically create sounds by generating waveforms through methods including subtractive synthesis, additive synthesis and ...

, and Evans plays acoustic and electronic drumkits. The music is instrumental and entirely improvised.Album notes in the booklet of ''Spur of the Moment'' (1988). DaTE. According to the booklet, instruments and fundamental note-patterns were decided upon prior to performing a piece, but no further structure was arranged in advance. A number of songs from ''Spur of the Moment'' were played live in a small number of concerts by Hammill and Evans in 1988 and again in 1996. A recording of one of these concerts from 1996 was released as '' The Union Chapel Concert''. A 20 second snippet of "Sweating it Out" was used as the theme music for a Boots the Opticians TV commercial.

Album cover

The album cover shows parchment with lines of red and green paint, and in some places a "2" or "two" is discernable.

Track listing

All songs written by Peter Hammill and Guy Evans, except where noted. #"Sweating it Out" #"Surprise" #"Little Did He Know" #"Without a Glitch" #"Anatol's Proposal" #"You Think Not?" #"Multiman" #"Deprogramming Archie" (Hammill, Evans, Ridout) #"Always So Polite" #"An Imagined Brother" #"Bounced" #"Roger and Out" (Hammill, Evans, Ridout) In the booklet of the CD "Surprise" and "Little did he know" appear as two different titles, but on the CD itself track 2 is called "Surprise / Little did he know" (and consequently the total number of tracks is 11). The original cassette had songs 1–6 on side A, and songs 7–12 on side B.

Personnel

– grand piano, guitar and keyboards driving samplers and synthesizers *

– acoustic and electronic drum kits Both players regularly play each other's instruments. As the booklet states: "In much of this music the straight edges of the conventional instrument/instrumentalist picture become blurred; often the overall effect is of one instrument being played by four hands in some strange modern variant on the traditional piano duet."

Technical

*Peter Hammill - recording engineer, mixing (Sofa Sound, Bath) *Paul Ridout – engineer, sequenced by, artwork

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Spur of the Moment (album) Peter Hammill albums 1988 albums