Counting beats with Van der Graaf Generator (5) - After the flood

I've never particularly liked this song that closes the first "real" VdGG album, 'The least we can do is wave to each other'. I've always found it grandiose and striving too much for effect: two features that normally don't appear in other songs of theirs. Last night, the song came on my headphones whilst walking the dog, and this time I paid attention to the various time signatures being played. The results are more than interesting.

The opening riff is in 104 - the guitar strum is "on the 10". The next part, with the lyric "Clouds have gathered" has one bar in 44 followed by one in 64. I didn't realise this last night, but writing this now makes me realise that these lines could also be viewed as being in 104. The pace then slows for more bars in 44. The "chorus" ('And when the water falls again') is clearly in 44.

At the 4:50 minute mark, a humungous riff starts to be played that repeats several times: this is in 124 - I think it's correct to write it this way and not as three bars of 44 as every note is emphasized equally. If I remember correcly, each note is only played once during each sequence making this an example of "12 tone serial music". This carries on for another minute and a half (probably too much) before a simple passage with (initially) only acoustic guitar and bass: this is in standard 44, until the word 'Annililation' is cried out (as someone wrote, like a crazed Dalek) over the 124 rhythm that returns for a few elongated bars.

From hereon, we're back into 44 for the elongated coda. The bass tends to play syncopated beats on the "and" of beat 4 of the previous bar, i.e. anticipating the first beat by a quaver.

---

This day in blog history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
421	30/10/2011	Sir Jimmy Savile	Obituary, RIP
422	30/10/2011	Succulent Sunday	Cooking, Slow cooker
771	30/10/2014	Another good idea	ERP
1181	30/10/2018	Losing an old friend, gaining a new one	Computer
1433	30/10/2021	Binaural beats and deep sleep	CPAP, MP3, The brain, Binaural beats, Sleep
1543	30/10/2022	Adding more old blog entries	Programming, Meta-blogging, Blog manager program