Fool's Mate
| Fool's Mate | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Studio album by Peter Hammill | ||||
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Publication |
July 1971 |
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| Label (s) | charisma | |||
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Format (s) |
LP, MC, CD |
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pop |
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Title (number) |
12 |
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running time |
44m30s |
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| occupation |
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|
John Anthony |
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Studio (s) |
Trident Studios, London |
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Fool's Mate (July 1971 ) is Peter Hammill's first solo album . He took on a number of guest musicians (including his colleagues from Van der Graaf Generator ) within a few days in April 1971 .
The chess theme in the title ( "Fool's Mate" is the English name for the Fool's Mate ), and the cover, (whose figures are however not built in a Fool's Mate for the most part of a chessboard, but a scholar's mate represent (Engl. Scholar's mate) ) seems to indicate similarities with the VdGG album Pawn Hearts (which was made a few months later); in reality, the two albums couldn't be more different.
The twelve tracks on Fool's Mate are all quite short, simple and mostly (by Hammill's standards) downright cheerful. They are from the early days of Van der Graaf Generator (with the exception of Happy , which was written in 1969). They would have been out of place between the band's increasingly dark and complex songs, however, and so Hammill decided to record them himself and release them as a solo album.
Track list
All titles, except those marked, are composed by Peter Hammill.
page 1
- Imperial Zeppelin - 3:38
- Candle - 4:17
- Happy - 2:36
- Solitude - 4:58
- Vision - 3:15
- Re-awakening - 3:57
Page 2
- Sunshine - 4:00
- Child - 4:25
- Summer Song (In The Autumn) - 2:13
- Viking (Hammill, Judge Smith) - 4:43
- The Birds - 3:36
- I Once Wrote Some Poems - 2:45
The CD remaster, released in 2005, also contains early demo versions of some titles as bonus tracks.
Bonus tracks
- Re-Awakening (early demos) - 4:37
- Summer Song (In The Autumn) (early demos) - 2:50
- The Birds (early demos) - 3:23
- Sunshine (early demos) - 3:54
- Happy (early demos) - 2:49