Since I spoke with Piero, Luca ,
and Paolo about the first three Victim Of Illusion releases
Italy was, for a time, the COVID19 hotspot with the
harshest of lockdown laws contrasted by neighbourhood karaoke from the windows.
But this didn’t stop Signor Hamer collaborating
on “The Place
I Left My Heart” with Katie
J on vocals, Luca
Imerito on bass, and Giampiero Ulacco at Hologram Studios on the
desk.
On 24 April 2020, Peter announced,
through the VOI
Facepage, the forthcoming release of his side-project “The Place
I Left My Heart”.
Now, whenever an artist works outside their usual field or project, the outcome
is usually somewhat similar to that for which they are better-known in the
original collective (RAMMSTEIN side-projects Emigrate from Richard Z Kruspe,
and Till Lindemann and
Swedish producer Peter Tägtgren on Lindemann are good examples). May
8 saw the release of this dark, moody, chunky, bass-laden industrial grind-core
in the style touted by RAMMSTEIN, Emigrate ,
and Lindemann but
with the touches Peter
adds through the influence he has created through Victim.
This is a really good song which I could hear Carmilla, Unveil,
or even RAMMSTEIN covering
it quite comfortably.
But the surprise when researching this piece was first
discovering Peter’s
Bandcamp page and his other work,
comprising a video-game sound track, two EPs, and another collaboration dating
back to 2015. Let’s look back at these chronologically:
“Wholes”
EP : December 2015
- Dark
Images – Starting as a TV-show theme under the opening credits would,
it moves through what would be described as an overture of what we can
expect, perhaps, from the rest of the record, including an
electric-didgeridoo effect during the closing minute.
- Caldera
– More thematic constructions; perhaps for a video game or
dramatic mood-music for the aforementioned TV-show. Great driving music as
well.
- Prophecy
– The title alone hinted at the prog-themes demonstrated
by Victim
Of Illusion’s work and the vocalisations that merge
from Gregorian-styled chants lead female-vocalist soloist and choruses
carry this forward. My son found a video game on Xbox which had a
soundtrack similar to this, and I could imagine playing something
adventurous or quest-based with this in loop during different parts of the
journey.
- Planet
Smash – An uplifting tinkling intro morphs into nightmarish
dischords, only to shatter the mood with a hard-rocking riff as Peter has demonstrated through his VOI work and revisited later in Left
My Heart. A slight mood restoration with introduces more bass-laden
keyboard accompaniment to finish a fine debut collection.
“Two Drops
in the Same Ocean” with Anthya : August 2017
Written in
collaboration with Italian vocalist Anthya, this is an ethereal mix of gentle guitars and Kate Bush / Natalie
Bassingsthwaite-styled drifting
vocals with tags including ambient, cinematic, and epic. Described as
video-game soundtrack music, this one stands alone quite nicely. The more I
listen to Peter’s work the more I want to find! Thank the deities for these music
streaming sites!
“Ancestral
Disorder” EP : June 2018
- Star’s Teardrop – Opening with a title such as this, one expects more
of the Anthya / Two
Drops-styled musings. Instead we’re treated to
a synth-pop/rock piece along the lines of some of Queen’s “Flash Gordon”
soundtrack-work as well as releases that celebrated the Ultima
Thule footage from the New Horizons
space-probe. But the whole way-exceeds the sum of these parts.
- My Unknown Battle –
This is what we’ve come to expect from Mr. Hamer
through his VOI work:
rockier, more metallic with time-signature and stylistic changes in the prog
tradition with the same tinkly music-box from Planet Smash in the middle-eight. A truly rhapsodic battle
piece.
- A Tale Called Life – Life,
as we know it, brings ups and downs; now, more than ever. Here, after the
title which demonstrates an internal battle, we have what Peter wants
us to see from the outside. Calm, soothing, but with a steady beat under
more choral / vocal effects ion another operatic / rhapsodic movement.
- This Unbelievable Horizon – Opening like a wavering lo-fi Eastern-European film soundtrack, we are soon treated to a Mike Oldfield / Ultima Thule opus to close out this remarkable work. To choose a stand-out from these pieces would be difficult, as they all have their individual qualities, but I do quite like this one and Life. So, what can we expect from his next venture?
“Water Ride
Express” video-game sound track album : March 2019
- Monster
Ride – Straight-ahead electric/acoustic-guitar incorporating
slide/blues rock that could stand alone very well. Opening credits
soundtrack?
- Downhill – A reprise
of Monster but with a
country/western up-beat.
- Surfing
Wave – Acoustic guitar with The Edge/U2 echo
effects .. Streets Have No Name but
quicker. It’s hard to pick the basis of the game from these three tracks.
This one could even be the closing-credits track.
- Two
Drops in the Same Ocean (instrumental) – Drama-building ethereal
mood-music as per that had me waiting for the beat to drop .. cue 84th
second. Love that drop-tuned bass from c.2:45! Rapidly becoming my
favourite from Peter’s
work to date.
- Boundary
Exception - Hope (Instrumental) – Prog Rock in ⁶₈ to start, morphing into other
signatures I couldn’t identify, then back again. Action-sequence backing
track.
- Victim
of Illusion - Dewdrop (instrumental)
– Space / jungle-mood dischords with the space-mood being overridden by
jungle drums into an epic rock beat and Simple
Minds-keys and more of that drop bass.
Marketed as a video-game soundtrack with tags
including cinematic, epic, and soundscape, any musician would be pleased to
include this in their discography without the distraction of a video game. It
could even work on its own in conjunction with (the space tunes on previous
release).
Now, in my experience, when an artist has a BandCamp page, there is usually
also a Soundcloud
page! And Peter
Hamer is no exception. Not only is The Place
I Left My Heart here, but you’ll find both vocal and instrumental versions of Two Drops,
and selections from “Wholes”, “Ancestral”, and “Water Ride”,
including the collaboration with Judy Kang on My Unknown
Battle. Peter Hamer is an amazing
musician and these collections are simply sensational! But which is the side
project, this work, or VOI?
Having reviewed all of his audio-only work it was
time to see if there was a YouTube channel. And whilst I was disappointed that
most of them are shorts and trailers, there are still full-length videos for
some of those songs including, like a good artist, work there not available
elsewhere, including Escape from New York, Profondo Rosso, The
Exorcist, Anesthetise, and a showreel of his work to that
point. We also learn why some of the releases on the other platform/s are “no
covers”, with the cover-versions appearing here instead.
“Both albums ‘Wholes’
and ‘Ancestral disorder’ are made of
6 tracks with 2 cover songs on each”, Peter explains. ”Since I cannot post
cover songs in Band Camp, I did a ‘no covers’ version, but if you go on
Spotify, Amazon or any other streaming platform you can find the full version
of the album”. And as an added extra bonus, there is also a collaboration with Jes Hudak on an Imogen Heap song
Hide and Seek, as well as more output
from side projects, including the female-fronted Boundary Exception from whom I would love to hear more,
based solely on the teaser on his website, and Mohai Experiment. There seems to be no end to Peter’s creativity!
Those cover songs include:
- Escape (metal-styled cover version of the John
Carpenter movie theme labeled as, perhaps, a
recoding from the “Wholes” project): Had me envisaging the scene
where Roland Deschaine and his troupe were walking through New York,
crossing the long-rusted pedestrian bridges, to meet Blaine the Super
Train that would take then to Topeka. I know this isn’t Carpenter but
it has the same desolate, apocalyptic, doom-laden epic journey that was
EFNY (I imagine- I haven’t watched it but I’m familiar with Carpenter’s work
as a filmmaker).
- Profondo: Another cover from the “Wholes” project, this one
has Mike Oldfield meeting Sky in
a sometimes ¹⁵₈ time signature with a huge church-organ a la Toccata
and Fugue / Thus Spake Zarathustra / Rick
Wakeman thrown in amongst the drop-bass and
multi-kick drumming. Wow!!
- Exorcist: And speaking of Mike Oldfield, here
is Peter’s
take on Oldfield’s
contribution to the Exorcist soundtrack from the “Ancestral Disorder”
project. The video is the aural spectrum under the album art showing the
track-position within the album with a rhapsodic piece whose time
signatures alternate between ⁷₈ and ⁸₈.
I have to thank Amanda Easton, who
valued my opinion and supported my writing since we first back in the 1990s,
for getting me back into this for her Christmas 2019 release and our subsequent
interview (and you're not going to hear the end of this, Amanda!).
The availability of music today is much more ubiquitous than it was back then
when you physically had to go to a bricks-and-mortar store to part with your
hard-earned for a silver disc in a plastic box. This is as good as it is bad
for 21st century musicians because, while it gets their work
into more ears than ever before, it doesn’t necessarily pay them any better.
But that discussion is for another day. As I trawl the Interwebz with thanks to
my Twitter feed, I will keep bringing you the treasures I find with the hope
that, one day, these people will bring their show to our shores and you can
physically go out there and support them!
PG (Jacky) Gleeson
30 July 2020
30 July 2020
