Hugh Banton

Hugh Banton
Hugh Banton, organist with Van der Graaf Generator
Background information
Birth name	Hugh Robert Banton
Born	April 1949 (age 75) Yeovil, Somerset, England
Occupation(s)	Organist, organ builder
Instruments	Organ, bass guitar, bass pedals
Years active	1968-present
Associated acts	Van der Graaf Generator

Hugh Robert Banton (born April 1949, Yeovil, Somerset) is a British organist and organ builder, most widely known for his work with the group Van der Graaf Generator.

Career

Banton was born into a musical family, where his father played the piano and his mother regularly sang along to music on the radio. He first started playing the piano at the age of four, and was later influenced by the music on Radio Luxembourg. In his teens, he liked both rock 'n' roll and classical music, and later studied piano and organ at Wakefield Cathedral, whilst attending Silcoates School in Yorkshire under Dr Percy G. Saunders. He then trained as a television engineer at the BBC before joining Van der Graaf Generator in May 1968 when the group (then consisting of just Peter Hammill and Chris Judge Smith) moved from Manchester to London. In performance with this group he played Farfisa and Hammond organs, adding a wide range of effects including phasing, tape echo, distortion and overdrive. He later modified a Hammond E112 organ to allow separate amplification, with different effects, of the output from the two keyboards and pedalboard, and added a remote reverb unit. He also played piano and bass guitar on recordings.

In 1975 he began building a custom organ based on a Hammond but with added electronic oscillators to closely approximate a full pipe organ sound, with bass notes down to 16 Hz played through 24-inch subwoofers.

Banton left Van der Graaf Generator at the end of 1976 to work on the development, design and installation of electronic church organs for the Makin Organs company in Oldham, Lancashire. In 1992 he set up The Organ Workshop, at Lymm in Cheshire. His organs use digitally generated waveforms to emulate the sound of pipe organ stops, and a recent speciality is combining digitally generated organ stops within conventional wind-driven pipe organs, to create a larger hybrid instrument. His company have installed organs of all sizes both in the UK and abroad.

He has continued to contribute to recordings by former members of Van der Graaf Generator, and a reunion of the group in 2005 that continues as a trio with Peter Hammill and Guy Evans.

Discography

Solo

• J.S. Bach - The Goldberg Variations (organ) (2003)
• Gustav Holst - The Planets (organ) (2009)

Van der Graaf Generator

• Aerosol Grey Machine (1969)
• The Least We Can Do Is Wave To Each Other (1970)
• H to He, Who Am the Only One (1970)
• Pawn Hearts (1971)
• Godbluff (1975)
• Still Life (1976)
• World Record (1976)
• Time Vaults (1982)
• Maida Vale (1994)
• An Introduction: From The Least To The Quiet Zone (2000)
• The Box (2000)
• Present (2005)
• Real Time (2007)
• Trisector (2008)
• Live At The Paradiso (2009)
• A Grounding in Numbers (2011)
• ALT (2012)

Other Collaborations

• Fool's Mate (Peter Hammill) (1971)
• Chameleon in the Shadow of the Night (Peter Hammill) (1973)
• The Long Hello (Hugh Banton, Guy Evans, David Jackson, Nic Potter) (1973)
• The Silent Corner and the Empty Stage (Peter Hammill) (1974)
• Nadir's Big Chance (Peter Hammill) (1975)
• Psi-Fi (Seventh Wave) (1975)
• The Love Songs (Peter Hammill) (1984)
• Skin (Peter Hammill) (1985)
• Gentlemen Prefer Blues (Hugh Banton, Guy Evans, David Jackson) (1985)
• Everyone You Hold (Peter Hammill) (1997)
• The Union Chapel Concert (Guy Evans, Peter Hammill) (1997)
• Curly's Airships (Judge Smith) (2000)

External links

• The Organ Workshop
• interview by Tim Locke at Van der Graaf Generator fan site
• The Goldberg Variations at Sofasound
• The Goldberg Variations, The Planets, at The Organ Workshop