by Nick Tate
It’s tempting to call Steve Hackett’s latest release, “Live Magic at Trading Boundaries” an “unplugged” album. But that’s not quite correct. Yes, Hackett & Co. are largely playing acoustic instruments, in stripped-down makeovers that cut the original full-band arrangements to the core. But, in fact, “Live Magic” would be better described as Hackett “unbound,” with nearly all of the 19 live tracks on the album untethered from their original plugged-in versions and reworked to include newly written material.
Before delving into the particulars of this stellar addition to the Hackett canon, a little background is in order.
Hackett has been playing annual winter acoustic concerts at Trading Boundaries in Sussex, U.K., for years. These intimate shows allows the ex-Genesis guitarist to deliver uniquely reimagined highlights from his 50-year-plus career, while also showcasing his classical side. “It’s always a joy for me to play at Trading Boundaries, a magical intimate place full of beautiful lights and exotic imagery, illuminating the darkest time of year over Christmas and New Year,” he says. “It’s the perfect location for my acoustic set.”
The new album is a compilation of high points from his winter acoustic shows. It features regular Hackett collaborators Roger King on keys, Rob Townsend on flute and saxophone, brother John Hackett on flute and sister-in-law Amanda Lehmann on guitar and vocals. But the album is so well paced and constructed it plays like a single concert, anchored and driven by Hackett’s widely varying catalogue and virtuosic fretwork.
Over the course of an hour, Steve performs a series of dazzling nylon-string solo guitar pieces and leads his supremely talented co-conspirators through a dizzying trek through his kaleidoscopic musical portfolio. Along the way, the crew also tackles a few classical music pieces and ladles in a few other surprises. As always, Hackett manages to pick some of the best compositions from his with Genesis days and since leaving the band to go solo in 1977. And, the truth is, some of these new acoustic arrangements rival the original full-band performances.
The album opens with Hackett delivering five solo acoustic pieces on nylon-string classical guitar that collectively hold together like a five-part mini concerto. The first piece is an introductory improvisation that showcases Hackett’s fiery fingering technique — a marriage of mathematical precision, songcraft, bone-deep soul and fluidity. Next up is the acoustic introduction to “Blood on the Rooftops,” from the 1976 Genesis classic “A Trick of the Tail,” capped by a glorious newly written outro that replaces the vocal/band performance that followed the intro on the original. Hackett follows it up with “The Barren Land” and “Blacklight” —two haunting beauties from his 1983 classical guitar album “Bay of Kings” — and “Horizons,” the familiar Bach-like etude from the 1972 Genesis album, “Foxtrot.”
After this lovely five-part overture, the band joins Hackett to play the effervescent “Jacuzzi,” from Hackett’s 1980 “Defector” album, incorporating a new flamenco guitar-driven interval. A mini-Genesis suite follows. It opens with the pastoral flute-guitar interlude from “Supper’s Ready” that precedes the cacophonous “Apocalypse in 9/8” break. Next, the band reprises “After the Ordeal,” the lone instrumental from 1973’s “Selling England by the Pound” and the guitar-piano duet from “Hairless Heart” (a highpoint of 1974’s “The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway”), which showcases yet another newly improvised section that takes the piece in an entirely novel direction.
Hackett then shifts gears and leads the band through the Latin-flavored “Jazz on a Summer’s Night,” from 2017’s “The Night Siren,” before dueting with brother John on “Gnossiene No. 1,” the jaunty flute-guitar duet that graces the Hackett brothers’ 2000 “Sketches of Satie” album, a tribute to French minimalist composer Erik Satie. “Walking Away From Rainbows,” from 1993’s “Guitar Noir,” follows before Hackett and friends launch into a striking excerpt from Francis Poulenc’s 1938 “Organ Concerto” (merging gothic churchy organ soundscapes with free-form jazz improvisations) and “The Red Flower of Tachai Blooms Everywhere,” the Asian-influenced mood piece from “Spectral Mornings.”
What comes next is the high-water mark of the album and perhaps Hackett’s entire solo career — “Hands of the Priestess,” from Hackett’s first solo album, 1975’s “Voyage of the Acolyte,” released while he was still on the Genesis payroll. In a satisfying reworking of the piece, Hackett has condensed the three-part suite to just two sections — merging the opening and closing acoustic segments into a single all-of-a-piece track and resecting the discordant electric middle interval that divided them on the original triptych. With only a few additional bars of new orchestral music stitching it all together, the new “Hands of the Priestess” is as strong and arresting a musical statement as the original, if not more so. Flute, sax, guitar and synthesizer lines merge, twist and join together like four rippling streams flowing into a moonlit lake.
Two surprises follow: A couple tracks from Lehman’s excellent 2021 solo album, “Innocence and Illusion,” which features Hackett, King and Townsend. “Memory Lane” is a poignant lament about her mother’s dementia, helmed by her enchanting voice. “Only Happy When It Rains” is a cabaret-style torch song, with Lehman delivering a sultry, late-night-jazz vocal and Hackett playing a funkified swamp-blues harmonica intro.
Another highlight of the album is next: “Ace of Wands,” from “Acolyte,” reworked so magnificently as a chamber-rock orchestral piece that it rivals the rockier original. The album then closes out with “The Journey,” the atmospheric classical-guitar etude from “Bay of Kings.” The upbeat piece ends the album on a high note, bringing the proceedings full circle with a satisfying conclusion that echoes the five-part nylon-string series that opened the record.
With such a wide variety of boundary-blurring musical styles — folk, prog, jazz, classical, cabaret and even world beat music — it would be difficult to imagine a more aptly named venue for the performances collected here. Also worth noting: Several pieces on “Live Magic” sound more like brief snippets or transitional interludes than fully realized works. But most tracks include newly written sections that elevate them and let them stand on their own. A handful even surpass the originals.
The result: “Live Magic” is a satisfying retrospective of Hackett’s long and distinguished career, with these new acoustic retreads sounding fresh and new, collected like a musical jewelry box of rare gems.
Setlist:
1. Improv (1:54)
2. Blood on the Rooftops (1:15)
3. The Barren Land (1:34)
4. Black Light (1:12)
5. Horizons (1:29)
6. Jacuzzi (3:20)
7. Supper’s Ready (Excerpt) (1:40)
8. After the Ordeal (2:01)
9. Hairless Heart (5:04)
10. Jazz on a Summer’s Night (3:48)
11. Gnossienne No. 1 (3:00)
12. Walking Away from Rainbows (3:28)
13. Poulenc Organ Concerto (Excerpt) (3:45)
14. The Red Flower of Tai Chi Blooms Everywhere (2:19)
15. Hands of the Priestess (5:39)
16. Memory Lane (5:12)
17. Only Happy When it Rains (4:08)
18. Ace of Wands (3:37)
19. The Journey (3:36)
Order now here: https://stevehackett.lnk.to/LiveMagicAtTradingBoundaries
Personnel:
Steve Hackett: guitars and harmonica
John Hackett: flute
Roger King: keys
Rob Townsend: flute and saxophone
Amanda Lehmann: guitar and vocals
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