Sitting Targets

Artist: Peter Hammill
Label: Blue Plate Caroline
Category: Music

Average customer rating:

Media: Audio CD
Number Of Discs: 1

UPC: 017046169523
EAN: 0017046169523
ASIN: B000000HUW

Release Date: 1990-08-30

Sitting Targets

Related Categories:

General

| Rock | Styles | Music

Progressive Rock

| Progressive | Rock | Styles | Music

Pop Rock

| Pop | Styles | Music

Progressive

| Rock | Indie Music | Stores | Music

Tracks:

Breakthrough
My Experience
Ophelia
Empress's Clothers
Glue
Hesitation
Sitting Targets
Stranger Still
Sign
What I Did
Central Hotel

Similar Items:

pH7
Over
A Black Box
The Future Now
Margin

Customer Reviews:

The end of the "MODERN ERA".......2006-11-14

"Sitting Targets" marks the end of the first and only real Peter Hammill era, that began with "Fools Mate" and ends with this lp. Many Hammill fans will dissagree and rightfully so , but to this end we find a means! After "A Black Box PH finds himself with a record company that is willing to support him again after the end of Charisma!
"Break Through" has a stamp of "Games without frontiers" to it. "Glue" was actually a 45 b/w "My experience" "sign" also a great acustic track and my personel best "What I DID" Great bass on that one! even "Ophelia" is very nice "stranger still" a classic "Great period in time , the last real peter hammill album ever made! If virgin decides to remaster this I will be very happy. Cover also catches the feeling of the times 1981. New Romantics did rule but hammill stayed strong!

PH's poppy record.......2006-06-10

Peter Hammill released a series of pretty good solo records in the late seventies and early eighties, his most notable, at least for this listener, being "PH7", "Future Now", and "A Black Box". Those records were sparse and shockingly in your face, at least for that era. He out-punked the punks without being punk.
"Sitting Targets" was an interesting record because it was a bit more slick than the the previous records and the songs had a denser mix. The songs are pretty good, especially "Ophelia", the almost danceable "My Experience", and "Stranger Still".
I still play this one from time to time, and recommend it to anyone wishing to give PH a try.

LOST IN THE MIDDLE.......2002-04-13

In what must be Hammill's "middle period", somewhere between "Chameleon" and "What, Now", some interesting tendencies begin to surface. Instead of album titles, albums tend to use a track title. Odd, that, because this naming style imparts such a different feel to whatever is summarized under the title. In this case, the title song, "Sitting Targets", is yet another call to personal responsibility, condensed in scale and scope to fit a "songs" format. The metaphors here and throughout the album seem simple and take on a surface gloss: the road is life, the car is an isolating shell, even if we think we're safe, we really aren't, etc., etc. The music has a terrific, home studio sound: raw, unpolished with wildly tweaked EQ. The playing is adequate, but never informed by the extremes of his earlier work.

And now, something interesting happens, at least to my perception of Hammill's style. From the perspective of his very recent work, the early solo work was bathed in deeper degrees of abstraction and what seemed to be earnest, raw emotion in the vocal delivery. Here the writing and singing begin to sound less earnest and more theatrical. Meaning that over-the-top, heavy technique demanded by the traditional theatre. Practiced for effect, and telegraphed rather than inferred. The style that once seemed intrinsic and authentic, now seems heavily rehearsed and staged. All this transmits a tangible degree of brittleness and artificiality to the whole experience. There are some terrific riffs, some beguiling instrumental and vocal processing and treatments - Hammill's "Sonix" perhaps begin this period, but that's a whole different subject.

"Sitting Targets" is in many ways a very worthwhile recording. Compared to most of the catalog here on Amazon, I'd take it in a heartbeat. Compared with Hammill's own library, it's simply a transitional step. Enough to say that what once came from the heart here comes from the mind, and many many times the heart has proven to be the wiser.

Metal Hammill.......2000-12-11

"And now, for my big hit!" pronounced Hammill and smiled, before he played "Sitting targets" (the song). It was in Tel Aviv, 1985, and all us in the audience - not more than 300 - laughed with him. Hammill and hits? get outa here!! Anyway,"Sitting targets" is a metal album, that probably influenced by Gary Numan, and other artists of the late 70s. Synthesizers and drum machines took some of the humanity of Hammill. I missed the piano, the drum and the bass guitar. Only the saxes of David Jackson were around in a few songs. But still - listen to the gentle "Ophelia" and "Stranger still". The remarkable description of crisis between lovers in "My experience" and "Sitting targets", and the desperation in "What i did". Hammill was always great in painting sad pictures from everybody's life or nightmares. All the people who read his lyrics, find themselves there. This is Hammill, and "Sitting targets" is another good album of his.

Music Album:

Music Album

Music Album

Music CD

Longitude ~ Charlie Hunter, Bobby Previte, DJ Logic

With Respect to Nat ~ Oscar Peterson Trio

Jazz of the 1920's: Greatest Hits ~ Various Artists

Jazz Guitar - Django Reinhardt, Kenny Burrell, Barney Kessel, George Benson, Wes Montgomery ~ Kenny

Diva ~ Sarah Vaughan

Tenshi No Gijinka ~ Keiji Haino

So Wie Ich Bin ~ Klaus Hoffmann

Face in the Water ~ Maalstroom

Aasha ~ Sangeeta Shankar

I Love World ~ Dream