Dome of Discovery
Review in PAWN HEARTS, June 1994

And here's what Peter's cohorts have been up to:
The big news in this department is the release of Judge Smith's ‘Dome of Discovery’, his first real solo CD, on Fred Tomsett's Oedipus Recs. Many of the songs are in a similar style to those on ‘Democrazy’. You'll find a review of sorts herein, and of course we're stocking copies of this.

CD Review: Judge Smith ‘Dome of Discovery’
At last, the first proper studio album of Judge's career, and frankly, I don't really know what to say about it. Most of you will be familiar with Judge's relationship to VdGG and PH, so just a brief recap: founding member of VdGG who left before the first album, an occasional contributor of songs to PH's solo career, librettist of ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’, and writer of many theatrical pieces and the occasional pop song for the likes of Lene Lovich. His ‘Democrazy’ CD, released a couple of years back, highlighted the best of his unreleased work from the late '60's to the late '70's.

‘Dome of Discovery’ mostly falls into the same territory as the theatrical songs on ‘Democrazy’. You won't find much of the existential angst Judge poured into songs like ‘Four Pails’ on this outing. The first track, ‘Tell Me You Love Me’, comes in sounding like Sparks with British rather then American humour (although the brothers Mael certainly owe something to British wit). ‘Carpet Tiles’ continues in the same vein, an energetic romp falling somewhere between musical theatre and intelligent pop.

‘The Voice of the Night’ presents a lyric gloomy enough for PH but the words are framed in yet another happy melody, giving the song a different tilt altogether, so that When the world is destroyed, there will ring out forever, the Song of the Void doesn't sound bad at all. ‘Don't Point That Thing At Me’ is driven by heavily reverbed (?) guitar and mixes ironic social commentary (gun control) with a somewhat predictable comic ending.

‘What Will I Do Without You’ follows, familiar through the Lene Lovich cover version of some 14 years ago, Judge's version is slightly calmer, perhaps, but very much in the same spirit.

And so it goes, as Kurt Vonnegut would say. There's an even dozen mostly happy tunes here, played and sung mostly by Judge in the Peter Hammill tradition of record making. At least that's the impression I get from the liner notes, which use line drawings of various instruments beside the song titles to identify which are used on each track. Since no one else is credited with playing, and the notes say all songs written, produced and sung by Judge, I'm assuming he also played all the instruments.

If you enjoyed ‘Democrazy’ this will probably appeal to you as well. It certainly has little or nothing besides production style in common with PH's work, making it easy to see why (?) Judge's involvement in VdGG ended early on (the two writing styles would certainly make for a schizophrenic collaboration within the context of a band). ‘Dome of Discovery’ works well as light entertainment - just don't expect more.