"I continue to believe, contrary to the given wisdom, that it's more interesting to have an album - or, indeed, an individual song - which has variety rather than homogeneity"
About this Quote
A quiet provocation hides inside Hammill's polite phrasing: "I continue to believe" reads like a musician refusing to be domesticated by the market logic of taste. He’s pushing back on "given wisdom" - the unspoken industry rule that cohesion sells, that an album should behave like a single brand identity: one mood, one sonic palette, one algorithm-friendly vibe. Hammill frames the fight as aesthetic, but the subtext is economic. Homogeneity isn’t just a creative preference; it’s a packaging strategy.
The sly power of the line is how he widens the target. He’s not only defending the messy, shape-shifting album; he insists that even an "individual song" should contain multitudes. That’s a direct challenge to the idea of the track as a tidy unit designed for playlists, radio formatting, or instant comprehension. Variety means risk: tempo changes, tonal left turns, emotional contradiction, the refusal to resolve into a single feeling. It asks more of the listener, and Hammill is essentially betting that attention can still be earned, not merely captured.
Context matters: Hammill comes from prog’s heyday, where the album was a canvas and structural surprise was part of the thrill. Yet his point lands sharply now, in an era when "cohesive" often means "interchangeable". He isn’t arguing for chaos; he’s arguing for narrative friction - the kind that makes you lean in because you can’t predict what comes next.
The sly power of the line is how he widens the target. He’s not only defending the messy, shape-shifting album; he insists that even an "individual song" should contain multitudes. That’s a direct challenge to the idea of the track as a tidy unit designed for playlists, radio formatting, or instant comprehension. Variety means risk: tempo changes, tonal left turns, emotional contradiction, the refusal to resolve into a single feeling. It asks more of the listener, and Hammill is essentially betting that attention can still be earned, not merely captured.
Context matters: Hammill comes from prog’s heyday, where the album was a canvas and structural surprise was part of the thrill. Yet his point lands sharply now, in an era when "cohesive" often means "interchangeable". He isn’t arguing for chaos; he’s arguing for narrative friction - the kind that makes you lean in because you can’t predict what comes next.
Quote Details
| Topic | Music |
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