HUGH HOPPER — 1984 (review)

HUGH HOPPER — 1984 album cover Album · 1973 · Fusion Buy this album from MMA partners
3.5/5 ·
Sean Trane
Hugh’s first solo album has the merit of sharing some similarities with Wyatt’s End of an Ear: both album were recorded while still inside the Soft Machine, but by now the works of a disgruntled member of that group, and both albums definitely fell on Henry Cow members who would be another two years before starting to release albums. Both this Orwell-inspired album and Wyatt’s earlobe album can be considered as the foundation block of the future Rock In Opposition movement. Coming with an all-read boring cover, the album consists of two sidelong suites, where appear many Canterbury-related guests, although I wouldn’t call them the usual suspects. If Marshall and Evans are expected, Windo and Coxhill are not surprising; Pye Hastings’ presence is a bit of an eyebrow raiser. This is obviously the most experimental album the Caravan leader ever took part in. Hopper’s first solo album takes its roots some ten years before, upon his first contacts with Daevid “Pothead” Allen whom had been in contact with Terry Riley’s loop experiments.

Hugh’s work on loops is obviously the first point of interest in this album but the drones from his fuzzed-out bass are also the other feature, but let’s face it, this is a bassist’s album and the Miniluv intro is almost just that, bass. Things pick up quite a bit in the Minipâx I with three horn players, Marshall and Hastings playing from almost melodic to downright dissonant music, which goes in the second movement losing Pye and Lol, but this time it’s mostly music crumbling apart without even being assembled.

The flipside starts Miniplenty on some kind of Aborigen drones (but nothing like a didgeridoo) with added world percussions, but it echoes the Miniluv of the other side of the disc, but it soon develops into dissonant electronic doodlings and nears some atonal musique concrete. Definitely less comfy than the A-side, this one is not for everyone, even not really for me.

A stunning album that’s probably one of most adventurous “Canterbury” or Stomu’s two albums with Hugh in the fold than this “Orwellian” oeuvre. album, but it must be said that Hugh’s work with Japanese writer Stomu Yamashta (after his departure from Soft Machine)in his East Wind formation recreates works of this nature. Personally I much prefer Wyatt’s debut solo album.

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