Van Der Graaf Generator - Real Time

How to reunite and keep your dignity intact

At the start of May 2005, the most fabled Van Der Graaf Generator line-up took to the stage at London’s Royal Festival Hall to promote their first new album in 29 years, Present. Real Time is that concert captured.

As the dust settles, there is always a worry that any concert souvenir will not be anywhere near as good as the memory. Well, Real Time really is. You get two hours of four men working very hard before a rapt crowd. You also get, among others, a beautiful, sweet Refugees; an edgy, difficult Scorched Earth; an enormous, foreboding Darkness (11/11) and a climatic Sleepwalkers. The tracks from Present are rendered so well as to sit comfortably alongside the classics.

When Present came out, RC lavished five stars on it. It remains, in its way, a textbook reunion album. We still stand right by it, and the five stars for this breathtaking, visceral memento. File under impenetrable, solid, spiky, soothing, strange.

5 stars 5 stars 5 stars 5 stars 5 stars

Fie! | FIXD 01 (2-CD)

Reviewed by Daryl Easlea
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