PRESENT

Present is the 9th full-length studio album by UK progressive rock act Van Der Graaf Generator. It´s the first studio album release by the band since The Quiet Zone / The Pleasure Dome (1977), so Present falls under the comeback album catagory. Compared to The Quiet Zone / The Pleasure Dome, Present features the classic Van Der Graaf Generator lineup of Peter Hammill (lead vocal, guitars, piano), Guy Evans ( drums, percussion), Hugh Banton ( organs, piano, Mellotron, bass pedal/guitar, synthesizer) and David Jackson ( saxophone, flute). Present is a 2 disc release. Disc 1 features 6 new studio compositions by the band while disc 2 features 10 improvisational tracks. The latter is actually quite a surprise as Van Der Graaf Generator´s songs have always been tightly constructed with little room for improvisation. It´s always exciting to hear how the music sound on comeback albums and in the case of Present, I´ve been VERY excited. I mean 28 years is a long time and to be honest I´ve been a bit worried about my reaction to this album.

The music on Present is so unmistakably the sound of Van Der Graaf Generator that it hurts. The band haven´t lost an inch of their bite and dark intriguing approach to progressive rock in the 28 years since The Quiet Zone / The Pleasure Dome was released. The overall quality might not be up there with the best of the band´s output from the seventies but there are some high class compositions on Present. Disc 1 starts out really well with the excellent Every Bloody Emperor. That song imidiately sucks me into the world of Van Der Graaf Generator. Peter Hammill´s clever vocal lines and paatos filled voice, Hugh Banton´s dark atmospheric keyboard/ synth playing, Guy Evans strong drumming and David Jackson´s great sax and flute playing. This is how we know Van Der Graaf Generator and it´s like they were never gone. Boleas Panic is a bit different as it´s an instrumental track with soloing. Very unusual and while it´s a great track I would have preferred a "real" composition as there are enough improvised pieces on disc 2 to satisfy my need for that type of music. Nutter Alert is another dark and excellent track on the album but the quality drops a bit on the next two tracks Abandon Ship! and In Babelsberg which I guess incorporates too many regular rock elements to really make my blood boil. They are both quality compositions though. The last track on disc 1 On the Beach is a more subtle song. Beautiful but not really excellent. Disc 2 is as mentioned filled with improvised pieces and it´s a great disc in it´s own right. At 65:21 minutes it might be a bit too long for its own good though.

The production is overall very good. There are a couple of issues here and there that I´m not too fond of, but it´s good.

Present is a good album by Van Der Graaf Generator and it even reaches excellent a couple of times, especially Every Bloody Emperor and Nutter Alert scores high points with me, but when that it said I could have wished that the whole album was on the same high level as those two songs. A 3.5 star rating is deserved. This one is close to 4 stars though.