HENRY COW

Containing a live set taken from an appearance on Radio Bremen, this archival Henry Cow release hails from the band's terminal phase. They'd already had the recording sessions that produced the material which, after some internal strife and dissent, eventually saw the light of day on the first Art Bears album (with the rest of Henry Cow credited merely as backing), and they'd yet to go into the studio to record their swansong, Western Culture. Precisely because it was recorded for radio, the sound quality is solid, and the band are going out on a high, with an extensive improvised segment (titled simply Bremen) at the heart of the set.

Originally made as a free gift to subscribers of the 40th Anniversary Henry Cow box, before being made available separately and bundled in the Cow Box Redux, this is a grab-bag of material which didn't fit anywhere else either on their studio albums or on the various archival live releases the Cow has put out. Material ranges from early demos from before they'd even signed to Virgin to latter-day live material, the latest of which comes from a Radio Bremen appearance hailing from the period after the sessions that eventually got released as the first Art Bears album and before the sessions that gave rise to Western Culture, Henry Cow's swansong.

Part of the expansive range of Henry Cow archival releases that first saw release in the Road boxed sets before getting individual releases (and recompiled in the Cow Box Redux), Later and Post-Virgin is, as the name implies, a grab-bag of material from the twilight years of Henry Cow. Virgin and Henry Cow had become mutually unhappy with their contractual relationship, and Virgin agreed to release Henry Cow from their remaining obligations in mid-1977, after having breached the contract by refusing the Cow access to the Manor to record their next album.

But it would be internal creative differences that would slaughter the Cow in due course; though the wide range of performances this draws on leads to a certain lack of unity, that lack of unity itself reflects what was going on with band. Note in particular the presence of Joan and On Suicide - two songs which would see the light of day on the first Art Bears album, when after being recorded with Henry Cow a band dispute broke out over the song-oriented direction and eventually the compromise reached was that Krause, Cutler, and Frith would use the Art Bears project name for the material and the rest of Henry Cow would be credited as guests (in a sort of reflection of the process that saw Slapp Happy and Henry Cow merge).

The upside of the tensions within the band is that you get a decidedly broad range of material here, with different band factions each pushing their own material. It might not quite as gel as more harmonious moments chronicled in these live releases, but we're still dealing with competently executed and creatively interesting music turned out by a seasoned group whose creative fires were still burning hot at this point.

Blending together two sessions for Swedish radio, this was originally released on the second Road boxed set from Henry Cow before being made available separately (and also included in the Cow Box Redux). As a result of being recorded for radio broadcast, it's one of the better-sounding live discs to have emerged from the Cow archives, and reveals the late-era band in fine form, with a mixture of familiar Cow compositions, improvisation, and a dynamite cover of Phil Ochs' No More Songs. The latter makes you wonder whether Henry Cow realised their time as a unit was almost up; sure, they had one more studio album in them, but Western Culture was very much the end of the line, one last go-around together before the Cow name was put to rest. (John Greaves, indeed, had already left by this point.) If they did have a sense of impending mortality, they wear it well.

One of the more eccentric live sets collected in the mighty Road boxed sets from Henry Cow (later reissued in the Cow Box Redux as well as being made available as a standalone release), this consists of a mighty, epic set of stark improvisation, with The March played as an encore and to reintroduce you to the world of remotely conventional music afterwards. This sort of thing can be terrible if mishandled, but this incarnation of the Cow were so in tune that it has a compelling power of its own, like all of their darkest and most disquieting material, which makes you understand how they could have seen acts like Univers Zero as fellow travellers.

Originally put out in the 40th Anniversary Henry Cow boxed set before being repackaged as a standalone release (and as part of the Box Redux), Beginnings offers a fascinating look at Henry Cow recordings from prior to LegEnd. The sound quality is impressive, since the set draws extensively from Peel sessions for radio that the band participated in, and finds the group very much influenced by Canterbury. The main influence is the more avant-garde end of what Soft Machine were doing at the time - there's some very Softs-esque rumbles and buzzes here and there - but Came To See You offers a glimpse of a gentler Cow, with the sort of soothing territory of Caravan visible. By the end, hints of their future more challenging direction become apparent.

The group with possibly the highest average IQ's playing together, created in this album an authentic manifesto of what it means to take the most learned and complex music to the fields of Rock, marking a before and after in the conception of the term Avant-Prog and having to this day the cult deserved for it.

At times chaotic and Dadaist, "Western Culture" was precisely that: to make it clear that they could have fun and have a good time together, taking the rules of music conservatories to the extreme, creating songs that hide behind their intricate elements precious passages of the purest beauty, for those of us who like RIO as much as contemporary classical music. It's hard to say if it's his best work, but easy to say it's one of his perfect works and touchstone of the genre. Huge job!

Perhaps one of the hardest nuts to crack in the four album legacy of Rock In Opposition legend HENRY COW, the band's second release UNREST (album #2 of the three album sock triptych) followed the debut "Legend" in less than a year but established an ever-changing stylistic approach and lineup that guaranteed each album sounded utterly unique in its short reign of the avant-prog underworld. Obscuring the obvious and punctuating the sounds that gravitate around a designated composition rather than presenting it in a clear fashion, UNREST continued the cutting edge experimentalism of the debut and took it even deeper into the recesses of the unexplored musical terrains where experimental art rock rendezvoused with Canterbury jazz, free improvisation and chamber music all dressed up in an air of 20th century classical alienation and a smattering of European free jazz.

UNREST found classical trained bassoonist / oboist Lindsay Cooper fresh out of Comus and replacing saxophonist Geoff Leigh which in the process took the band into an entirely new direction as she would become a key member in the band's distinct Rock In Opposition repertoire. After a lengthy demanding tour with Faust, the band lacked enough newly composed material for the duration of a second album, therefore UNREST found HENRY COW upping their free improv game significantly and finding clever new ways of extending limited material into sprawling and mind-blowing musical motifs that were as dramatic as they were intimidating. Perhaps the most notable examples of HENRY COW's bizarre sense of reinterpretation comes with the opening "Bittern Storm Over Ulm" which deconstructs The Yardbird's B-side blues rock "Got To Hurry" and resurrects it as an unrecognizable display of progressive rock and avant-garde jazz freakery. Cooper's distinct oboe style immediately sets the album apart from its predecessor.

The following "Half Asleep_Half Awake," a John Greaves contribution is perhaps the most "normal" of the diverse swath of sounds and styles offered on UNREST with the most consistent bass groove and the only track to cop a bit of the Canterbury jazz vibe that traversed the debut thus adding a touch of warmth and familiarity before launching into some of the most alienating soundscapes of the HENRY COW playbook. The Frith penned "Ruins" shifts gears completely by evoking the classical world of Hungarian classical composer Béla Bartók and adopting his use of Fibonacci number sequences to forge the abstruse beats and harmonic orchestral effect which in conjunct with the avant-rock guitar and jazz accompaniments offered a bizarre mishmash of a rock-based futurism the early pioneers of rock and roll never could've envisaged in their wildest dreams. After a jittery and skronky display of contrapuntal excess, the track takes a hairpin turn into the world of 20th century classical before reprising the unique chamber music effect and finally an energetic rock-fueled outburst that cedes into a etheric sustain closing sequence.

While primarily favoring a penchant for the trenchant instrumental workouts with improvised tape manipulations and pushing the musical avant-garde to the excesses of the extreme, "Linguaphone" showcases some rare vocal contributions albeit in wordless utterances in the context of chaotic noisy effects in the vein of Faust only augmented by Cooper's oboe sprinklings and Cutler's spasmodic percussive accents with pointillistic appearances of other band members channeling their inner Stockhausen. "Upon Entering The Hotel Adlon," a titular reference to a hotel in Berlin where German occultists started The Third Reich, showcases the most energetic display of rock run amok found on the album with spastic drumming patterns accompanied by frenetic free jazz saxophone squawking and bat[&*!#] crazy bass thumping seemingly displaying every conceivable time signature move coalescing all under the guise of a single track. The short "Arcades" offers a comedown moment with sparse instrumentation that slowly oozes angular rhythms and discordant sustain power.

As the album winds down with the Greaves 1972 composition "Don't Disturb Me" and deconstructed to only be resurrected in the form of "Deluge," the band pulls out their best sprinkling effects over a stabilizing bass groove which finds sputtering sounds bleeping in and out of existence while slinking sax naughtiness slithers to and fro between the cracks thus concluding one of the wildest prog experimentalism of the mid-1970s. UNREST fittingly describes its contents well as a menagerie of manic effulgence with a keen sense of uncompromising creativity. Add to that the amazing adaptability of eking out an entire album's worth of innovatory musical developments with only a handful of precomposed scores to work with. The improvisational skills were as impressive as the musical breadth of this team of musical agents seemingly operating out of a completely different world than any other act of the day.

While UNREST truly can be considered the pinnacle of avant-prog liberties run taken to the apex of creative freedom with no attempts to pacify the music normies of the era, it certainly latches on to the subconscious which picks up on the hidden patterns and structures and beckons for a deeper understanding. Perhaps one of those albums nobody will truly comprehend, it was certainly one that firmly established that HENRY COW was no one-trick pony, or should i say moo moo cow and had the chops to deliver an ever-evolving stylistic approach that seemed to have no limits. Although it requires a number of active listening exposures to even begin to sink in, UNREST is an acquirable taste that reveals much more than random noise chatter shrieking by in chaotic procession. Woefully ahead of its time, HENRY COW and albums like UNREST required several decades for zealots of extreme music to fully appreciate. While not as immediate as "Legend" nor as perfectly structured as "Western Culture," UNREST and its propensity to set sail across the vastness of what the world of sound had to offer resulted in some extraordinarily fascinating albeit bizarre musical experiments.

I have always loved some weird and more abstract music. Stuff like The Residents, Captain Beefheart, Frank Zappa, etc and etc. Avant Garde music is pretty neat to me on how they can blend both traditional and non traditional musical elements together to make a weird, hypnotic, or sometimes creepy experience. With that being said I won't call it my favorite genre of music, or Prog, however I do have a soft spot for the bands that make these weird sounds. One of these bands is Henry Cow. Just now I listened to their debut album. I was pretty prepared for what was too come. After all this wasn't my first rodeo in the Henry Cow ring, since a few months ago I listened to the very great 'In Praise of Learning'. I knew I would at least enjoy this album, so I listened to it and so here are my thoughts.

The first song, Nirvana for Mice, introduces us to the early sound of Henry Cow. Before being Avant-rock, they were more sorta Canterbury or Fusion or Avant-Jazz. Stuff like that. It is a pretty smooth yet weird song that gets more abstract the more it goes on. The next song, Amygdala, is more in line with Fusion works mixed with some bits of Avant Garde of course. It is a smooth, pretty mellow track you can listen to. After that we get to what I think is probably my least favorite track on the album, Teenbeat Introduction. Now I know the point of Avant-Prog music is too be rock like and abstract in sound, however I feel like this song kinda gets on my nerves a bit, plus it's very annoying, especially at the end. But it leads to the very good Teenbeat, a very sick jazzy song that holds some cool brass instruments and drumming. Side 2 is where the really good stuff takes place. Extract from with the Yellow Half Moon and Blue Star is a very free form and jazzy song with a very cool bass riff that leads to some cool drumming. The reprisal of Teenbeat is like a remembrance of the good times you have had with the first side, and plus the electric can go pretty hard at times, like a solo in a 70s hard rock or metal band, but in a free form and weird environment. The Tenth Chaffinch is a very hypnotic track. It is creepy in it's sound and the abstraction is super interesting. It's like if Teenbeat Intro wasn't just nonsense for the sake of nonsense but instead, nonsense to make something that is executed greatly. Then the last song, Nine Funerals of the Citizen King is such an amazing track. It is like a combination of all the best elements of the best songs on the album and uses it to make a good finale for the record.

Overall this album is very good, however it definitely has it fair share of some issues that if you listened to the album can be quite noticeable. But that doesn't detract from the good stuff on the album. Overall I enjoyed this album and I think some people can to if they like more experimental music.

Henry Cow on their debut presents a delightful slice of Canterbury Scene. One can expect none of the Psychedelic stuff, rather the instrumental changing compositions of say Egg or Soft Machine. This is achieved through a lovely bass driving each track alongside some sublime guitar and various brass/woodwinds with sprinklings of keys. Oh and who could forget the eclectic drumming firing off a subdued barrage of percussion.

Since this album has other reviews discussing the tracks I'll simply mention some of the ones that really give me an issue.

Teen beat Introduction is the second track and consists of mostly saxophone squealing which is surprisingly ambient and to me very dull. When the song finally begins a lot of energy has been lost for me.

Teenbeat itself is a morphing landscape of sound that ultimately does not warrant the previous four minutes as the track itself has many moments where instruments are dropped for some really boring stripped down sections.

The Tenth Chaffinch is like a sound collage, there are instruments playing music here but I think sound collage describes this one well. Moderately chaotic ambient.

Overall this is a solid album but I think the quality level is not high enough for a better review. In the coming years Henry Cow blossoms into something more befitting of the Avant Prog title, for now Henry Cow plays their brand of Canterbury Scene which is maintained for their follow up album, Unrest, an album I highly recommend over the debut if one wishes to try Henry Cow as it improves upon everything done here.