Spur of the Moment (album)

Spur of the Moment
Studio album by
Released27 June 1988
GenreArt rock, experimental music
Length56:19
LabelRed Hot
ProducerPeter Hammill
Peter Hammill and Guy Evans chronology
And Close As This
(1986)
Spur of the Moment
(1988)
In a Foreign Town
(1988)
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Review scores
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Spur of the Moment is an album of experimental music by Peter Hammill and Guy Evans, originally released as cassette tape on the Red Hot label in 1988, and on CD by DaTE, a division of Line Music GmbH.

Hammill plays the grand piano, guitar and keyboards driving samplers and synthesizers, and Evans plays acoustic and electronic drumkits. The music is instrumental and entirely improvised. According to the booklet, instruments and fundamental note-patterns were decided upon prior to performing a piece, but no further structure was arranged in advance.

Both players regularly play each other's instruments. As the booklet states: "In much of this music the straight edges of the conventional instrument/instrumentalist picture become blurred; often the overall effect is of one instrument being played by four hands in some strange modern variant on the traditional piano duet."

A number of songs from Spur of the Moment were played live in a small number of concerts by Hammill and Evans in 1988 and again in 1996. A recording of one of these concerts from 1996 was released as The Union Chapel Concert.

A 20 second snippet of "Sweating it Out" was used as the theme music for a Boots the Opticians TV commercial.