Peter Hammill's ‘Incoherence' is compulsive in its re-release
Peter Hammill
Incoherence
Esoteric (2-CD Set)
Everyone seems to be doing it, digging deep into the archive for their most misunderstood or misaligned music, then giving it a sparkly once-over with a dust rag.
From David Bowie issuing demands for Lodger and Never Let Me Down to be posthumously realigned, to The Beatles… yeah, whatever; from John Cale reworking Music for a New Society, to a horde of self-important studio mavens remixing whatever they can get their acquisitive paws upon; and yes, Peter Hammill as well, who follows up 2023’s redesign of his ‘80s albums In a Foreign Town and Out of Water by giving 2003’s Incoherence a fresh lick of paint.
Arguably, it needed it. In his own words, the original release was unfinished; a heart attack, and a period of recuperation saw to that.
“When I returned to the studio, I didn’t really have the inclination to go back over the mixes, so Incoherence was eventually released with the original ones. At a certain point I began considering a vinyl release for the album and realised that I’d have to do some element of a remix in order to find a split point. When I went back to look at the tracks, I got the idea that I could now do a much better job of a mix than I’d originally done.”
That’s not all that’s changed, however. Aside from the remix, an album that was originally presented as 14 songs united into a single (if very singular) piece of music has also been re-envisioned as 14 separate songs. Which is a jarring reassessment for anyone who has spent two decades with the full suite, but also a welcome one. A handful of songs definitely stand out more noticeably without the connective tissue, while the remixing adds fresh oodles of color and strength to both the individual songs and the continuous performance.
What hasn’t changed is the sheer quality of the songwriting here. True, Hammill’s world view has shifted somewhat since the halcyon days of the 1970s, and that unbroken chain of classics that occupied him throughout that decade. And those shifts are not always for the best.
In its original form, however, Incoherence ranked as highly as any of his other post-Black Box (1980) releases, and its new guise confirms that and then some. Is it a good place for the Hammill neophyte to begin exploring? Probably not. But with a handful of the earliest records already under one’s arm, Incoherence is also doggedly cohesive.
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