HENRY COW

Unrest is my favorite of all of the Henry Cow albums. Not just because it was the first one I heard (although it was). It is more avant garde than Legend, and less irritating than the Dagmar Krause albums. In short, this is very listenable weirdness, very much like Zappa's work around the time of Burnt Weenie Sandwich or Uncle Meat. Even the free jams and vocal improvisations are delightfully odd, but not ear splitting.

The best track on the album is Ruins, one of the best RIO pieces ever recorded. All at once, the song brings up classical, jazz and rock.

I would say, for the Henry Cow initiate, start here.

This, the first album by Henry Cow, is almost more like the sound of Soft Machine than the rock in opposition that the band came to represent. The music is much more jazzy, and jam laden than their subsequent releases, but still has the off the wall compositions, and free style playing that marks all of their albums.

The more organized compositions sound to me like Canterbury mixed with Frank Zappa's early avant garde pieces, with a bit of free jazz thrown in to the mix.

My favorite songs on this album are Teenbeat and Teenbeat Reprise, both featuring soloing over nicely off beat rhythms.

A good starting point from a great band.

Usually, when I hear Dagmar Krause singing, whether it's with Slapp Happy, The Art Bears, or Henry Cow, I find that her shrill meandering melodies detract from the fantastic instrumentation behind it. Not so much on this album. Her tone still annoys me a bit, but it seems to fit in better here. And one song featuring her vocals, Living In The Heart Of The Beast, might just be one of the best RIO pieces ever. The music is just so fantastic that I can forgive her voice.

This is a teaming of the bands Henry Cow and Slapp Happy, and both bands seem to fare wll for it. Other highlights, besides the above mentioned track are War more toward the Slapp Happy side of this grouping, with Peter Blgvad sharing the vocals with Kraus, and Beautiful As The Moon - Terrible As An Army With Banners which fares much better as a studio piece than on the live album.

This collection of different live recordings has many ups and downs. First of all, the sound quality is spuious at best. Some parts are clear, but never perfect. Some parts are rough and distorted. And some sound like the microphones were just scattered around the stage without respect for the instruments.

Also, I'm not sure why, but Dagmar Kraus' vocals usually annoy me. Her Lotte Lenya impersonation just doesn't strike a chord with me.

Despite all that, Henry Cow created some of the most interesting music of it's time. The compositions, if you can call them that can be eerie and disturbing, sounding like total disarray, but somehow in control.

The best parts here are when the band actually sets up some sort of rhythm for Frith and company to create solos and other noises over.

This is a good album, but I'd recommend getting the studio albums over this one.

This is quite a change from their Canterbury flavoured debut "Legend".Enter Lindsay Cooper with her bassoon and exit Geoff Leigh.Certainly the bassoon along with the chamber music style that is evident on a cople of tracks brings to mind UNIVERS ZERO,although this came out a couple of years before UNIVERS ZERO's debut.The first four songs were compositions written by Frith except for "Half Asleep;Half Awake" which was composed by Greaves.The last four tracks were a band effort with lots of improvising and experimenting in the studio after the fact. "Bittern Storm Over Ulm" features prominant angular guitar from Frith while Greaves on bass and Cutler on drums dominate the sound early.This sounds amazing! Horns come and go but it''s the guitar that steals the show for the first 2 minutes. "Half Asleep;Half Awake" opens with slowly played piano for a minute before a collage of intricate sounds come and go the rest of the way.There is so much to enjoy throughout this track.Just a pleasure.It ends as it began with solo piano. "Ruins" opens with a lot of tension and suspense until a melody arrives not too unlike the previous song.Cutler really shines on this one.Dissonant horns 3 minutes in.It settles right down before 4 minutes as we get some chamber music.This lasts for 6 minutes then drums and that earlier suspense ends the song.Amazing. "Solemn Music" describes this tune quite well. "Linguaphonia" features even more solemn music than the previous track.Bassoon will do that.Strange vocals from Lindsay as well on this one.Lots of atmosphere and it's quite experimental.I like it. "Upon Entering The Hotel Ablon" is led by drums and bass with outbursts of craziness once and awhile.Dissonant horns 3 minutes in to end it. "Arcades" is almost 2 minutes of chamber music. "Deluge" is a retrained song with intricate sounds coming and going quickly.Greaves comes in on vocals before 5 minutes to end it.His vocal style did remind me of Wyatt the first time i heard it. I think this is asignificant album for the Rio/Avant genre,and while i do prefer "Legend" and "Western Culture" i do believe "Unrest" should be in every Rio fans collection.Easily 4 stars.

HENRY COW's debut is an eclectic blend of Canterbury(SOFT MACHINE) and Frank Zappa with a dash of Rio/Avant thrown in the mix.Lots of wind instruments are used,and check out the lineup: Geoff Leigh,Tim Hodgkinson,John Greaves,Fred Frith and Chris Cutler. "Nirvana For Mice" opens with horns,drums and bass and it sounds amazing.I wish the whole song sounded like that,although the change a minute in is still good but with less melody and some dissonant sax. "Amygdala" features some flute before a minute and then the tempo picks up 1 1/2 minutes in.The drums and sax stand out before it calms back down with piano.The tempo continues to change. "Teenbeat Introduction" features some dissonant sax with light drums that come and go.It blends into "Teenbeat" which is both intense and crazy to begin with.Intricate sounds follow then a swinging sound 2 minutes in.It's followed quickly by a collage of beautiful sounds.Violin 3 minutes in with clarinat to end it. "Extract From "With The Yellow Half-Moon And Blue Star"" includes a good guitar melody for a minute.Some guest pixiphone on this one as well.I have no idea what that is either.A great sound before 3 minutes. "Teenbeat Reprise" is my favourite song on here.An uptempo song with some fantastic guitar,drums and bass on it.The guitar gets quite aggressive. "The Tenth Chaffinch" has a spooky organ and synth intro with dissonant sounds coming in with no real melody.An experimental song with some cool percussion after 5 minutes. "Nine Funerals Of The Citizen King" actually has vocals! This song reminds me of early SOFT MACHINE or Barrett era FLOYD.Violin 2 minutes in.A dramatic horn/drum section a minute later.Vocals return after that. Just a great album that i can highly recommend.

Much of the music here is closer to classical music, even if it remains on the unconventional side. This may very well be my favorite Henry Cow album, because it is full of variety without once becoming nonsensical.

"Industry" I love the initial electronic riff that leads into that really strange but somehow easy to follow arrangement. This piece consists of jangling noise and violin sawing through it.

"The Decay of Cities" One of my favorite tracks on the album, Fred Frith delights with a Joe Pass-like solo jazz acoustic guitar introduction. Lindsay Cooper eases her way in subtly, giving way to Chris Cutler on trumpet. Part of the music has an almost Oriental feel to it. Tim Hodgkinson contributes to that sound with his lap steel guitar. Other times, the music can sound like the theme song to a 1970s sitcom. All of this variety is what makes this one of Henry Cow's most interesting and lovable pieces of music.

""On the Raff" Brass instrumentation abounds on this moderately-paced, subdued instrumental. It isn't nearly as far-fetched as a lot of Henry Cow is, and is almost pleasant jazz music for sitting back and just enjoying, even if it does get a tad boisterous.

"Falling Away" Prior to the unbridled percussion, the music here is a lot like what one might hear on an old Bugs Bunny cartoon. At one point, however, the music sounds very much like Camel.

"Gretel's Tale" This short piece is slow and shadowy in at first. Overall, it sounds very symphonic, juxtaposing gangling segments with far more graceful measures. The middle section thunders, accompanied by almost random piano flourishes. The ending is closer to free jazz.

"Look Back" A very short piece, this is a symphonic-sounding one, much like the one before.

"Half the Sky" A fair bit of this majestic piece sounds a lot like Genesis, particularly that submissive but beautiful lead guitar tone. It's a complex arrangement, full of textures and various timbres; it's a great way to finish and phenomenal album.

Late 00's and it's been over 30 years since RIO fans have had any legitimate material emanating by the band that pretty well started it all, and all of a sudden come three 5-Cd box-sets, two of them filled with previously unavailable material (legit anyway) , while the last one is just five studio albums already available (they include Desperate Straights from Slapp Happy as one), thus leaving out the double Cd Concerts aside,(or maybe disseminated through the other box-sets).

Disc 1: The music here concentrates on pre-76 live material and I must say, I was hoping for a lot of material dating from prior to Leg End., and there is only one disc. Thus, this Beginnings Cd worries from 68 until 73, knowing the apart some three songs, the rest is from 71 at the earliest. And if you read my review of Leg End stating that Cambridge (HC's home town) was a town in Kent, a few miles out of Canterbury, this album is more proof of that. Another review of Robert Wyatt's first solo album End of an Ear could've been the earliest RIO-related album ever. Indeed this first disc goes out of its way to show that without Soft Machine's very existence, a far away rock movement might also not have seen the light of day. For it is clear that Frith and Co were definitely looking at the Machine and Caravan for inspiration , not only instrumentally, but in the vocal dept. Frith does a credible cross of Wyatt and Sinclair on vocals, while Hodgkinson pulls a credible Ratledge/Sinclair and Leigh a Brother Jimmy and Gentle Elton. Among the highlights are Came To See You, the 10-mins Teenbeat. Beginnings is definitely the most interesting Cd in these two boxsets, IMHO, although there are more worthy stuff to come.

Disc 2 is representing the 74-75 live era, the one around the release of the studio album of Unrest, and indeed the feeling is completely different on this Cd. As one can expect, there is much less Canterbury soundscapes and the usual goofy bonhomie that goes along with it, although there are still many strong and long moments in here, such as the first six tracks coming from an unmarked tape of early 74 where Drake does wonder with the sound. And HC do wander on the dissonance path, the tracks from Unrest oblige. Two or three of these tracks come from the Unrest album, but appear in a different light, more accessible than the studio version. Then come the Halsteren tapes where they did a big jam/improves lasting over a 30 minutes, where most of the sub-tracks are dissonant, the group being reduced to a Geoff Leigh-less quartet and most of the tracks were given names at the time of Drake's rebuilding job. I'm not a big fan of this second set, but most likely, I'll warm up to this. The last part of this Cd is a first throw of the IPOL epic Heart Of The Beast with a Robert Wyatt intervention. Rather interesting and definitely worth listening.

Disc 3 is mainly a German radio concert for NDR's then Jazz Workshop in late March 76 and still features John Greaves on bass, and to say the least, dissonant music , The music holds mostly in one block, some of it coming from the IPOL album, while there is an excerpt from Matching Mole's Gloria Gloom. In general the feel is dissonant but not free form like the upcoming Trondheim concerts. The last tidbits from this disc are from Italian and French sources and a cover of Little Red Robin from Rock Bottom, with another appearance from Wyatt himself, seemingly charmed by Dagmar and Lindsey's feminine presence (from the picture shown anyway). This third disc is definitely worth hearing as well.

Disc 4 & 5 are probably the hardest to take, both on them from Trondheim and with a little editing could sat on a single disc, rather than sit on two half-filled discs. This is especially true because of the nature of the music on this double disc affair. This is more of a "musique concrète" than free-form improvised rock or jazz, thus implying the music is atonal rather than dissonant. The group operates as an instrumental quartet (no bass), but I sure hope that most of the Tronheimers that braved the Artic summer chills were at least aware they would get dished this kind of music ahead of time. I'd have hated finding out that Dagmar was missing and that Greaves was not yet replaced by Georgie and get dealt this bunch of non-sense music (no offence to HC) that aggresses at best or bores at worst Anyway this double Cd is best left alone. Even if there are some accessible moments, it's a real shame that they've made it a double mandatory release along with the other discs in the boxset.

In conclusion, the first of the three boxset makes this RIO enthusiast only moderately happy, as the Trondheim concert over two Cds are a bit too much to be painless. Of course the first Cd of this is to my taste, but I'd rather have had the choice to make up my boxset from choosing from the 10 discs: my choices being, vol 1, 2, 3; 7 & 10 (the Dvd)....

The second boxset from HC is the real gift in these 40th anniversary series, since the first part contains pretty well everything that was legally available from them. With this second box, Henry Cow makes theirs all of those illegal boots and gives us a few jewels along with the boots. Please read the separate reviews for the Stockholm & Goteborg and the DVD , since they are also available (at least I understood) separately. So Past the sixth (Swedish) volume and its 75-76 line-up co,mprising of Dagmar, Lindsey and Georgie for the feminine camp, and of Chris, Fred and Tim on the male side, you?ll find the odd appearabnces of john greaves, Anne-Marie Roelofs , Geoff Leigh and Dave Chambers in very small quantities. So, onwards past the Swedish chapter.

Disc 7 is called Later and Post Virgin (which is self-explanatory) and obviously worrying of the 76-77 period , when the group will effectively become a RIO group. A few boot tapes were recuperated and cut by Cutler and arranged/mixed/mastered by Bob Drake. Surprisingly enough I find the sound often quite good despite the sources being on two-track cassettes, which is quite a relief, since I was expecting a few sonic cringing moments. Four concerts are featured here, one from London early 77, two from The Netherlands in summer of 77 and one from France or Belgium (both have a city called Chaumont) in late 76. The real surprise is that the London concert is very Canterbury-esque and it could easily be Caravan or Hatfield having a tough time digesting the supper served that night. The dissonances are kept to a minimum and maybe the vicinity of the KLent capital is partly responsible. Anyway, Leg-End seems to be the inspiration of that night, as the presence of Teenbeat might hint.. The first Holland piece (in Vlissingen) is definitely more dissonant chamber rock that was generally their concerns those days. Definitely more bizarre are the Chaumont concert tracks filled with dissonant percussions and wind instruments thus being reminiscent of Unrest, thus probably making it a difficult night for the Chaumont crowd in attendance that night, but no more than the previous Vilssingen track. The four Amsterdam tracks of very average sonic quality and present HC on a more Canterbury-esque (ala National Hatfield) but it?s going much tougher and rougher than in London and veers dissonant /Ubnrest instead of legend. This seventh disc is a pleasant surprise, despite some expected poor sonic qualities.

Disc 8 has Late for a moniker is a March 78 Bremen radio jazz broadcast, so sonically we are woprry- free as Radio Bremen is as spotless as the BBC is in terms of released recordings.. What's unfortunate for me is that with Dagmar absent HC was very much in an Unrest mood, which means that the show was often heavily dissonant but seemingly entirely written and composed with very little improvs around. Most interesting is the 6-movements15-mins New Suite especially in its early part present a few Crimsonal traits and one can wonder if Frith has not changed first name from Fred to Robert. Excellent stuff. However the following Bremen piece is definitely more dissonant and lasts a good deal longer and comprised the Erk Gah piece already heard on the previous two discs. Both in this Bremen piece and the New Suite, there are moments where the music is fairly reminiscent of Univers Zero (the bassoon is helping), but by now the two groups have met (UZ opened for HC in Brussels) and the RIO chart has been signed , but the dissonant and nearly atonal in the final section of the disc is not an easy listen.

Disc 9 is a very late Cow and the only Cd with short duration time, clocking at less than 40 mins (all the others are hovering around 75). Indeed some tracks emanate from the Italian summer tour or 78 and the rest come from the Drury Lane Rio festival in March 6, 78, both dates quite close to the dismissal of Henry Cow. But it's relatively interesting to see that the RIO chart did have a slight effect on HC?s music as all five groups are now aware of each other and although not competing, they're pushing their individual boundaries beit personally, collectively and group-wise. The more interesting track on this disc are the Drury Lane one, partly because they are recorded from the desk (by a Samla crew member), while the Italian tracks were from cassettes and had to be more reworked by the excellent Bob Drake.

Disc 10 is a DVD and would probably be The most satisfying piece of this boxset if the 76 concert in French Switzerland had not been concentrating on the IPOL album (which is not my fave), and therefore contains a lot of Dagmar vocals . The full concert was well filmed and has excellent sound, but I'll give it one flaw: both Lindsey Cooper and Georgie are almost invisible and have no close-ups due to the band placement and camera accessibility AND Dagmar conveniently positioning herself in front of her two female cohorts. Female competitiveness, I suppose. Anyway outside these considerations, this DVD has everything to make the normal HC cow salivate, yours truly included.

Other aspects: despite a very interesting accompanying booklet, the individual Cds come with almost insufficient booklets, therefore meaning that they'll never be available outside this boxset. The boxset itself is unfortunately rather conventional and will probably age badly with the paper and cardboards getting maximum wear during transport. No doubt adhesive transparent plastic sheet will be needed in order to preserve the object from falling from grace due to wear and tear. The back spine of the boxset makes it clear that this is the second installment of a three-part collection, which will have us wondering what else Henry Cow has got on the backburner and when is desert happening.

If I understood well, S&G is the only Henry Cow "new album" to be sold separately from the second boxset, but I?ll be damned if I remember a valid explanation, except for maybe this album being the only real novelty along with the DVD (also part of this boxset and sold separately); indeed in the hype of this release, I think the other Cds' contents where generally available through bootlegs or the band itself. It might also be the only Cd of the boxset with a good sound as the three sources (2 concerts and a broadcast) are from the source

As usual with HC, their live appearances were generally even more experimental than their studio effort and their Swedish tour was no exception. So if you like Leg-End, cringe art Praise Of Learning and puke at unrest, this is definitely not for you, even if there are some more accessible moments, but they?re rather far and between. Actually this S&G concert is definitely closer to Western Culture than Unrest in terms of accessibility, and most of the two Stockholm dates, Dagmar Krause "sings" although I wouldn't say her presence is overbearing like on IPOL album.

What is not immediately perceivable is that with this line-up (which is the one of most of the boxset) is that Henry Cow might have been Henriette, for there are three women in the band. Indeed besides the previously mentioned Dagmar and her disputable vocals, we have the usual wild-looking Lindsey Cooper and her terrifying bassoon and whatever wind instruments she decides to torture, but also the cuter Georgie Born (although some of her dresses are cure against love) with her transparent bass guitar and when not, her cello. Defending the male faith are the mainstays Fred fFrith on guitar, vibraphone and violin, Chris Cutler on drums, electronics and whatever was struck by his sticks, and the more eclectic Tim Hodgkinson and his organ and array of wind instruments . In total we have a highly interesting album for those willing to invest the time in repeated listens, because it?s clear that the Swedish concerts don't give in all that easily: you have conquer them, but ultimately this should be very rewarding, to the image of the album-closing March or No More Songs (from Goteborg).