Spur of the Moment (album)

Spur of the Moment
Studio album by Peter Hammill and Guy Evans
Released	13 Feb 1988[1]
Recorded	at Sofa Sound, Bath
Genre	Art rock, experimental music
Length	56:19
Label	DaTE (a division of Line Music GmbH)
Producer	Peter Hammill
Peter Hammill and Guy Evans chronology
And Close As This (1986) Spur of the Moment (1988) In a Foreign Town (1988)

Professional ratings
Review scores
Source	Rating
Option Magazine	(not rated)[2]

Spur of the Moment is an album of experimental music by Peter Hammill and Guy Evans, originally released as cassette tape on the Red Hot label. A remastered version was released on CD on the DaTE label in February 1988^[3] (not in 1991, as Sofa Sound suggests). The album is currently out of print.^[4]

Hammill plays grand piano, guitar and keyboards driving samplers and synthesizers, and Evans plays acoustic and electronic drumkits. The music is instrumental and entirely improvised.^[5] 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.^[5]

A number of songs from Spur of the Moment was played live in a number of concerts by Hammill and Evans in 1997. A recording of one of these concerts was released as The Union Chapel Concert.

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.

1. "Sweating it Out"
2. "Surprise"
3. "Little Did He Know"
4. "Without a Glitch"
5. "Anatol's Proposal"
6. "You Think Not?"
7. "Multiman"
8. "Deprogramming Archie" (Hammill, Evans, Ridout)
9. "Always So Polite"
10. "An Imagined Brother"
11. "Bounced"
12. "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).^[5]

The original cassette had songs 1–6 on side A, and songs 7–12 on side B.^[3]

Personnel

• Peter Hammill – grand piano, guitar and keyboards driving samplers and synthesizers, and engineer
• Guy Evans – acoustic and electronic drumkits
• Paul Ridout – programming, sequencing, manipulation, and engineer

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."^[5]

References

1. "This recordings are official recordings of Peter Hammill, Van Der Graaf Generator and other (..)". vapp.de/ph. Retrieved: 12 August 2011.
2. Option Magazine review
3. "Peter Hammill & Guy Evans – Spur Of The Moment (Cassette, Album) on Discogs". discogs.com. Retrieved: 12 August 2011.
4. "Peter Hammill Miscellaneous Recordings". sofasound.com. Retrieved: 12 August 2011.
5. Album notes in the booklet of Spur of the Moment (1988). DaTE.