IN PRAISE OF LEARNING

A good tagline for this album would be, ''Are you up for the challenge?'' You had better drop every previous musical sensibility you've ever had before spinning IN PRAISE OF LEARNING because Henry Cow drops one of the biggest musical challenges you will ever hear.

Henry Cow's brand of music is very hard to put in words. For the big epic (''Living in the Heart of the Beast'') and ''Beautiful as the Moon'', Henry Cow take on the dramatic classic opera approach loaded with quiet passages that seem to do very little. This is until the piano and Dagmar Krause's vocals create a mini-climax. Frith and Greaves occasionally provide fret pyrotechnics, but the overall mood of these pieces is dry.

''War'' is the odd thing on the album as its a short, fiery piece with manic piano, occasional guitar bursts and Krause's voice turned completely ugly. I say it's the lone highlight of the album. Two other tracks are complete improvisations in the sense of the band seems to have just randomly hit notes for six minutes. I am not impressed.

Hardcore RIO that's meant to really challenge the listener, something I feel that Henry Cow wanted to bestow upon us. Not the best introduction to the genre, especially if one needs to have a melody or two at some point.