A Black Box
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| A Black Box | ||
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| Studio album by Peter Hammill | ||
| Released | 1980 | |
| Genre | Art rock | |
| Label | S-Type Records | |
| Professional reviews | ||
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| Peter Hammill chronology | ||
| pH7 (1979) |
A Black Box (1980) |
Sitting Targets (1981) |
A Black Box is an album by Peter Hammill, originally released on S-Type Records in 1980.
Hammill performed nearly all the instrumentation himself, including the drum parts, a task he had first undertaken on his previous album pH7. His ex-Van der Graaf Generator colleague David Jackson also made a guest appearance, along with David Ferguson of the new-wave band Random Hold, whose debut album Hammill had produced.
Side A of the record featured a collection of shorter songs, however side B was devoted to "Flight", a lengthy multi-section song. This was the first time Hammill had included a lengthy song of this type on one of his solo albums since the early 1970s.
The short-lived S-Type label (the name was a pun on "stereo-type"), on which the album was originally released, was set up by Hammill and his then manager Gail Colson. Colson had formerly been a director at Hammill's previous record company, Charisma Records, who had dropped him from their roster just prior to the recording of A Black Box. The S-Type label does not appear to have been a successful business project, and the album was later licensed to Virgin Records, who have since also acquired Hammill's Charisma catalogue.
[edit] Track listing
All songs written by Peter Hammill, except where indicated.
- "Golden Promises"
- "Losing Faith in Words"
- "The Jargon King"
- "Fogwalking"
- "The Spirit"
- "In Slow Time" (Peter Hammill/David Ferguson)
- "The Wipe"
- "Flight" (Flying Blind/The White Cane Fandango/Control/Cockpit/Silk Worm Wings/Nothing is Nothing/A Black Box)
[edit] Personnel
- Peter Hammill – vocals, guitar, keyboards
- David Jackson – saxophone, flute on 4 and 8
- David Ferguson - synthesiser and tambourine on 4, 6 and 7
