01. Some Questions About Hats (1:49) 02. The Owl (2:14) 03. A Worm Is At Work (1:52) 04. Bad Alchemy (3:06) 05. Europa (2:48) 06. Desperate Straights (4:14) 07. Riding Tigers (1:43) 08. Apes In Capes (2:14) 09. Strayed (1:53) 10. Giants (1:57) 11. Except From The Messiah (1:48) 12. In The Sickbay (2:08) 13. Caucasian Lullaby (8:20)
Peter Blegvad / guitar, voice Mont Campbell / french horn Lindsay Cooper / oboe, bassoon Chris Cutler / drums Nick Evans / trombone Mongezi Fezza / trumpet Fred Frith / guitar, violin, xylophone John Greaves / bass guitar, piano (4)
Anthony Moore / piano Tim Hodgkinson / clarinet, organ, piano (13) Dagmar Krause / voice, wurlitzer (12) Geoff Leigh / flute Pierre Moerlen / percussion (5)
Slapp Happy was formed in 1972 in Hamburg by British composer Anthony Moore. At the time he was recording for Polydor, but was continually frustrated by the more popular direction the label was trying to woe his music. His music was sited as not commercial enough. Venting this frustration he proposed the formation of a pop group with his girlfriend (Dagmar Krause) from Hamburg and an American friend Peter Blegvad. So Slapp happy was born. After much disputes and bantering Blegvad and Moore convinced Krause of their inabilities to sing and she step up as their sing. And to this day remains as one of the distinctive characteristics surrounding the band.
Shortly after recording 'Unrest', Henry Cow entered into a merger with label mates Slapp Happy. Slapp Happy comprised Dagmar, their German vocalist who would later win great acclaim for interpretations of Brecht, Peter Blegvad, American born but raised and educated in England, played guitar and wrote most of the lyrics and would later contribute the unique strip cartoon Leviathan to the Independent, and Anthony Moore, English pianist who wrote most of the music and who would later work with the post Waters Pink Floyd. Together they produced a kind of skewed pop awash with literary and artistic references. They had recorded 2 albums with Faust, the second of which was re-recorded with session players for Virgin. 2 albums would come from this merger; Desperate Straights (Slapp Happy with Henry Cow) and In Praise Of Learning (Henry Cow with Slapp Happy).
Desperate Straights was the first of the joint ventures to be recorded, and the union of Henry Cow's avant rock with Slapp Happy's warped pop was both challenging and accessible. The majority of the songs were built around a piano/bass/drums accompaniment, with other instruments adding extra colour where needed. Tim Hodgkinson's clarinet is deployed as an instrumental foil to Dagmar's unique voice to superb effect, particularly on the opening song Some Questions About Hats. Elsewhwere, The Owl features Dagmar accompanied solely by horns and Europa has some superb percussion from Pierre Moerlen - all the arrangements are highly original and well thought out. Peter Blegvad takes the lead vocal on Strayed and does a neat pastiche of Lou Reed's drawl. Excerpt From The Messiah is a snippet of Handel as though played by a 70s glam metal band like Slade. There are 2 instrumentals, the title track which is a short, off kilter foxtrot, and the closing track, a lengthy piano/clarinet piece which features the 2 instruments playing scales very slowly. Caucasian Lullaby isn't bad at all, and would have been a superb addition to one of Eno's Obscure label releases, but it is somewhat out of keeping with the rest of the album.
This release is more representative of Slapp Happy than Henry Cow. If you've ever wondered what a cabaret band from mars would sound like, this album is definitely for you.
01. Casablanca Moon (2:49) 02. Me and Paravati (3:25) 03. Half-Way There (3:18) 04. Michaelangelo (2:36) 05. Dawn (3:21) 06. Mr. Rainbow (3:52) 07. Secret (3:31) 08. Little Something (4:35) 09. Drum (3:35) 10. Haiku (3:05) 11. Slow Moon's Rose (2:55)
Anthony Moore / keyboards Peter Blegvad / second vocals Dagmar Krause / lead vocals
Marc Singer / drums Dave Wintour / bass guitar Graham Preskett / violin, mandolin Roger Wootton / backing vocals Eddie Sparrow / drums, congas, whistles Jean Herré Peron / bass guitar Clare Deniz / cello Nick Worters / double bass Jeremy Baines / sausage bassoon Andy Leggett / jugs Clem Cattini / drums Henry Lowther / trumpet Geoff Leigh / saxophones Keshave Sathe / tablas, tamboura
Following their Polydor debut Sort Of, Slapp Happy recorded a follow up which again featured backing from members of Faust. Unfortunately Polydor decided not to release it, and it languished in the vaults until Recommended gave it a much deserved release in 1980. Salvation appeared in the form of Virgin, flush with the profits from Tubular Bells, and this album was more or less a remake with the song Haiku replacing Charlie & Charlie from the Faust version. Debate rages to this day as to which is the better version; some dismiss the backing on this version as the work of session men, which is a tad unfair as the trio are backed by a stellar crew of players including cameos from Faust's Jean Herve Peron and Henry Cow's Geoff Leigh.
Whichever version you pick, there's no question that this album marked a significant progression from their fine debut album. Dagmar emerged here as the principal vocalist, with Blegvad getting just one lead vocal and a duet. Moore and Blegvad's songwriting had matured considerably as well, with Blegvad's erudite lyrics sharper and wittier and Moore's skewed pop songwriting moving more towards a kind of pan European cabaret style, with a definite RIO twist. The arrangements are largely acoustic, and are mostly sympathetic to the songwriting, although in places the strings add an unnecessary saccharine touch. From the warped tango of the opening track it's clear that this is no conventional rock album, and the first 6 tracks are infused with the kind of whimsy (described as 'sinister' by Blegvad) found on albums by Kevin Ayers and Robert Wyatt. A particular highlight is Mr Rainbow, a tribute to the French poet Rimbuad with one of his poems sung by Dagmar, giving a foretaste of her acclaimed interpretations of Brecht songs, this being juxtaposed with a down and dirty rock interlude where Blegvad sings lead for the first time on the album. The following 2 songs opened the b side of the vinyl original and are closer to the acoustic soft rock of Carole King or James Taylor than to RIO - the Faust versions of The Secret and A Little Something are harder edged and the better for it. The album closes with 3 more strong songs, including Blegvad's excellent Haiku. This is a kind of continuation of Heading for Kyoto from Sort Of, which was inspired by Basho's classic The Narrow Road To The Deep North. Haiku is written as a series of elegantly phrased - you guessed it - haikus, and the lyrics show that Blegvad was deeply immersed in the work of Basho and his acolytes and his lyrics do justice to the form in a way that few non Japanese have ever achieved. The lines 'Systole, diastole/Dealing with the parts but feeling with the whole...' have a triple inverted irony which crams more into a handful of syllables than many songwriters manage on entire albums.
After this Slapp Happy would forge an alliance with another great avant prog outfit, Henry Cow, and would subsequently resurface once a decade or so to the delight of of their small but intensely loyal fanbase. This is an album which is full of hidden delights, and it was through hearing it that I became acquainted with Basho, visited the Rue St Jacques in Paris (during a near riot, with the French riot police on one side and some very mean looking protesters on the other), read Rimbaud and learned the meaning of the words 'systole' and 'diastole' (look them up. I had to). Recommended, but as you've probably guessed I'm not 100% objective here
01. Just a Conversation (4:07) 02. Paradise Express (2:38) 03. I Got Evil (2:33) 04. Little Girls World (3:34) 05. Tutankhamun (2:15) 06. Mono Plane (6:52) 07. Blue Flower (5:21) 08. I'm All Alone (2:52) 09. Who's Gonna Help Me Now (2:28) 10. Small Hands of Stone (4:43) 11. Sort Of (2:21) 12. Heading for Kyoto (3:10) 13. Jumping Jonah (3:07)
Anthony Moore / keyboards, vocals Gunther Wusthoff / saxophone Dagmar Krause / piano, vocals Peter Blegvad / clarinet, guitar, vocals Werner Diermaier / drums
SLAPP HAPPY was a multinational (specifically British/German) Avant-garde pop group consisting of Anthony MOORE (keyboards), Peter BLEGVAD (guitar) and Dagmar KRAUSE (vocals). SLAPP HAPPY was formed in 1972 in Hamburg, Germany by British composer Anthony MOORE. At the time he was recording for Polydor, but was continually frustrated by the more popular direction the label was trying to woe his music. His music was sited as not commercial enough. Venting this frustration he proposed the formation of a pop group with his girlfriend (Dagmar KRAUSE) from Hamburg and an American friend Peter BLEGVAD. So Slapp happy was born. After much disputes and bantering BLEGVAD and MOORE convinced Krause of their inabilities to sing and she step up as their sing. And to this day remains as one of the distinctive characteristics surrounding the band.
In 1972 SLAPP HAPPY recorded their first album 'Sort of' for Polydor (Germany), with the Krautrock group Faust as their backing band. They took a very simplistic and innocence mind set into studio, crafting a primitive pop album complimented beautiful by KRAUSE's pure German tainted voice. Refusing to play live the marketing behind the album provided to low sales of the LP.
Just a year later (1973) they returned to the studios to record their second album 'Casablanca Moon' (which was to be later released as 'Acnalbasac Noom'). After the disappointing commercial success of 'Sort of' Polydor continued to press the band for more pop orientated material and this is what they recorded. MOORE and BLEGVAD composed simple well crafted pop songs, entailing lush melodies and poetic lyrics. Still not impressed with their work Polydor refused to release the album.
The band then left Polydor (for the better) and moved to London where they were quickly snapped up by the Virgin Records label who was looking for more than just another pop band, which fitted SLAPP HAPPY like a glove. Friends FAUST and HENRY COW had already signed deals. They went on to re-record and release 'Casablanca Moon' in 1974 at the Virgin Manor Studios with the helping hand of session musicals. The approach was more designed at Moore and Blegvad true nature of compositional techniques, producing a more complex song design. Here we also see the lyrical themes tending towards the eccentric side of the spectrum, discounting their roots in the commercial pop realms. That year, SLAPP HAPPY went on to be one of Virgin's biggest money earners. The album was originally release entitled simple 'Slapp Happy' but was later changed to 'Casablanca Moon'
It was to be another 6 years (1980) before Recommended Records release the original 'Casablanca Moon' (backed by FAUST), talking a play on words entitling it 'Acnalbasac Noom'. These two recordings were to become SLAPP HAPPY's most love releases, with constant arguments between fans of which album triumphed over the other. During the time between these two releases Slapp Happy made confidences with label mates Henry Cow and in late 1974 recorded a split album 'Desperate Straights", which despite the variances in style turned out to be a success. Once again in 1975 the two bands joined forces, with Krause as vocalist for Henry Cow acclaimed 'In the Praise of Learning' while Moore and Blegvad took on minor rolls.
While KRAUSE reminded with HENRY COW for many more years, both MOORE and BLEGVAD couldn't ignore the vast differences between the bands style and thus forced the split of SLAPP HAPPY. Both MOORE and BLEGVAD set out on separate solo careers of varying success.
The band was to collaborate again twice during the nineties, producing both 'Ca Va' and 'Camera'. Now coming into a more modern age the band made extensive use of layering and other studio effects. To some fans the lose of the signature 'acoustic sound' was a disappointment, but relatively speaking both albums were solid efforts.
SLAPP HAPPY crafts a unique style of Avant-garde pop; while remain sophisticated, they draw from pop subtleties, from playful moods to the airy voice of Dagmar KRAUSE. Recommend to those looking for a lighter taste of RIO/avant-prog.
Maybe due to the band's unwillingness to promote this album with live gigs and everything else one would assume goes hand in hand with a music career, - Slapp Happy remained somewhat obscure at the time of this release. It's kinda sad, especially when you start to listen to this riveting and unassuming debut album simply called Sort Of......Slapp Happy. The meaning behind the title escapes this listener, but what does shine through in the most charming way, is the feet thumping, psychedelic whiskey shooting straightforwardness of this thing. Sure, you probably saw the RIO avant sticker applied here on PA, and thought to yourself: "Ahhh it's one of those unlistenable albums with people playing drainpipes and castrated frogs.... Count me out!" - upon running screaming in the opposite direction. Such thinking is pure madness though, and if anybody out there is reading this review and maybe even feels on the fence about this sort of music - or just think they've pigeon-holed the entire genre by listening to a couple of albums from Zappa and Henry Cow, I urge you to take a chance with Sort Of. It could well be your introduction into a world of shiny things with teeth.
Having said that, you could be lead into thinking otherwise, as Sort Of sports a couple of big hitters inside the more experimental side of rock music. 3 members from Faust lend a helping hand in this recording - and you also meet a young Peter Blegvad who back then sounded far more occupied with dirty gritty hard rock, than what he later got associated with. Finally there's the tiny pixie named Dagmar Krause, who sings like a female version of David Surkamp. Allrighty then....
The thing is - this debut is far from being an avant garde release. It's only in the details you hear traces of what was to come. The Faust input feels strangely in line with the surrounding psychedelic blues rock n' folk style, and if I didn't know any better, I'd say it sounded like a quirkier Big Brother with Janis singing from the insides of a helium bubble.
The crunching spillonking guitar antics of Peter Blegvad are what's running things here. Often coming off as a distorted blues man, he propels this venture forward with a steadfast easy digestible Chuck Berry lick. Much of what you hear wouldn't feel out of place in a Woodstock setting, where the rhythm n' blues framework got stretched to fit whatever agenda put on the menu, whether that was the Latino spicings of Santana or the hippedi hop pop of Sha-na-na. On here, you are faced with the German lineage of the blues. What the Amon Duuls proposed to do with it - that underground gelatinous raw blues feel, even if you won't find much in the way of free-form composition or amazing LSD freak-outs on Sort Of. The sound is very much an echo of the psychedelic blues rock happening in the late 60s.
It's first when you dig a little deeper that you start to hear those quirky bits. The side of the record that screams for unorthodox measures and iron fisted koalas. Like I mentioned earlier, it is indeed a subtle shading to the proceedings, but it helps pull the album up from the everyday blubber of 1970s blues rock. It's in the spastic percussion touches that continue to embellish the music throughout the album. Something that Faust were masters at. Just hearing the drums on some of these tracks makes me think of the wilder side of Ginger Baker. Keeping a straight beat without implementing the high hat or snare drum like they were meant to is a very hard thing to do - especially when the track you're supposed to be backing is a rockabilly tune with a severe need of a 1 and 4. Yet on here it works, and does so beautifully and with refined subtlety. What? We're talking about Faust here - aren't we?!?!?!
This is what sets the album apart from other such psychedelic blues rock affairs of the time: unusual backing ornamentations like a twittering saxophone, bar-room piano, mumbling snuffling percussions, unorthodox drumming and the unique vocals of Madame Krause. For those of you who've heard horror stories about this woman's vocal chords, don't believe any of it! She's as charismatic and powerful as she is integral to this band's sound. The minuscule traces of German accent that lie at the tail-end of her phrasings are abnormally beautiful, and I honestly wouldn't have it any other way, and just so you know: I usually despise accented vocals. Furthermore, she doesn't even sing that much on this debut. Blegvad belts out his booming blues voice just as frequently, and the flip flopping effect of the Minnie Mouse tinged psychedelics of Krause and the big meaty elk booms from Blegvad match perfectly the music surrounding them.
Sort Of is far away from being representative of this band's future career, but it is a wonderful meeting between the States and Europe. This is where the blues fuelled psych rock dances with the quirkier side of the European avant garde eccentricities, yet without ever loosing it's natural heritage.
Personnel Lindsay Cooper – oboe (tracks 1-5,24-32), bassoon (tracks 1-5,24-32), piano (tracks 24-32) Chris Cutler – drums, glass bowls and clatter (tracks 7-23) Fred Frith – guitar (tracks 1-5,24-32), viola (tracks 1-5,24-32), piano (track 1), electric and acoustic guitars (tracks 7-23), prism (tracks 7-23), xylophone (tracks 24-32) John Greaves – bass guitar, piano (track 3), clothes pegs (tracks 7-23) Tim Hodgkinson – organ, alto saxophone, clarinet (tracks 7-23) Dagmar Krause – voice (tracks 24-32)
Guests Robert Wyatt – voice (tracks 29,32)
Track notes Tracks 1-5 are from an unmarked tape, 1974 Tracks 7-23 are from a concert at the Verenigingsgebouw in Halsteren, 26 September 1974, recorded by Jan Smagge on a stereo reel-to-reel Tracks 24-32 are from a concert at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, Paris, 8 May 1975, with live mix by Sarah Greaves
Volume 3: Hamburg
Recordings from the March 1976 Hamburg, Germany concert.
Personnel Chris Cutler – drums Lindsay Cooper – obeo, bassoon, piano (tracks 8-11) Fred Frith – guitar, piano (tracks 1,4,12,13) John Greaves – bass guitar, voice (track 3) Tim Hodgkinson – organ, alto saxophone Dagmar Krause – voice
Guests Robert Wyatt – voice (tracks 14,15)
Track notes Tracks 1-13 are from a public concert recorded for the NDR Jazz Workshop, Hamburg, 26 March 1976 Track 14 are from a concert at the Piazza Navona, Rome, 27 June 1975, mixed by Sarah Greaves Track 15 are from a concert at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, Paris, 8 May 1975, with live mix by Sarah Greaves
Volume 4-5: Trondheim
A double CD of a complete concert recorded in Trondheim, Norway in May 1976.
201-206. "Trondheim II" (Cooper, Cutler, Frith, Hodgkinson) – 31:54 207. "The March" (Frith arr. Henry Cow) – 6:25
Personnel Lindsay Cooper – oboe, bassoon, tapes, voice, flute, recorder, piano, jaw harp Chris Cutler – drums, telephone mouthpieces, amplification, flotsam, voice, jetsam, piano Fred Frith – guitar, 6-string bass guitar, xylophone, tapes, violin1), tubular bells (CD 1), Tim Hodgkinson – organ, clarinet, voice, tapes, alto saxophone (CD 2), mbira (CD 2)
Track notes
All tracks from a cassette recording made by Henry Cow at the mixing desk at a concert at Studentersamfundet, Trondheim, 26 May 1976, mixed by Joel Schwartz
Volume 6: Stockholm & Göteborg
Swedish Radio recordings of concerts performed in May 1976 in Gothenburg and May 1977 in Stockholm.
Georgie Born – bass guitar, cello (tracks 1-7,12-14) Lindsay Cooper – bassoon, flute, recorder, piano (tracks 1-2), tapes (tracks 9-11) Chris Cutler – drums, electrification, piano (track 10) Fred Frith – guitar, xylophone, tapes (tracks 9-11), piano (tracks 13-14) Tim Hodgkinson – organ, alto saxophone, clarinet, voice (tracks 9-11), tapes (tracks 9-11) Dagmar Krause – singing (tracks 1-7,12-14) John Greaves – bass guitar (track 8), voice (track 8)
Track notes Tracks 1-7 and 12-14 were recorded for Tonkraft by Sveriges Radio at a concert in Stockholm on 9 May 1977 and broadcast on 8 June and 11 June 1977; the programme producer was S. Vermalin Track 8 was recorded for the NDR Jazz Workshop in Hamburg on 26 March 1976 Tracks 9-11 were recorded for Tonkraft by Sveriges Radio at a concert in Gothenburg on 28 May 1976 and broadcast on 14 July and 17 July 1976; the programme producer was Christer Eklund
Volume 7: Later and Post-Virgin
A collection of live performances from late 1976 and 1977.
Tracks 1-3 were recorded on cassette from the audience at Wandsworth Town Hall, London, 13 February 1977, live mix by Jack Balchin Track 4 was recorded on cassette from the audience at De Plek, Vlissingen, 22 May 1977, live mix by Jack Balchin Tracks 5-7 were recorded on cassette from the audience at Salle des Fetes, Chaumont, Paris 25 November 1976, live mix by Jack Balchin Tracks 8-11 were recorded on cassette from the audience at Melkweg, Amsterdam, 16 December 1977, live mix by Jack Balchin Track 12 was from an unidentified cassette recording, probably Italy, May/June 1977
Volume 8: Bremen
Extracts from a Radio Bremen radio broadcast in March 1978.
01. "Armed Maniac/Things We Forgot" (Born, Cooper, Cutler, Frith, Hodgkinson) – 11:55 "New Suite" 02. "Van Fleet" (Frith) – 1:49 03. "Viva Pa Ubu instrumental extract" (Hodgkinson) – 4:35 04. "The Big Tune Begins" (Frith) – 0:45 05. "The Big Tune Continues" (Frith) – 2:11 06. "The Big Tune Ends" (Frith) – 1:30 07. "March" (Frith) – 3:46 "Die Kunst Der Orgel" 08-12. "Bremen" (Born, Cooper, Cutler, Frith, Hodgkinson) – 34:25 13-14. "Erk Gah instrumental extract" (Hodgkinson) – 13:04
Tim Hodgkinson – organ, alto saxophone, clarinet, mbira, voice (track 9) Fred Frith – guitar, tubular bells, marimba (track 8), xylophone (track 14), violin, piano (track 7) Lindsay Cooper – bassoon, oboe, sopranino saxophone, recorder, piano (tracks 9-11,14), accordion, egg-slicer Georgie Born – bass guitar, cello Chris Cutler – drums, marimba (tracks 9-10), piano (tracks 1,14)
Recorded for New Jazz Live at a public concert at Sendesall, Studio F, Radio Bremen, 22 March 1978, produced by Bernd Meier, concert mix by Jack Balchin
Volume 9: Late
A collection of performances from June and July 1978, plus Henry Cow's set at the inaugural Rock in Opposition Festival in March 1978.
Tracks 1-4,10 are from a source unknown, probably outdoors in Italy, June or July 1978, live concert mix by E. M. Thomas Tracks 5-9 are from the Rock in Opposition Festival at New London Theatre, Drury Lane, London, 12 March 1978, recorded by Hasse Bruniusson of Samla Mammas Manna, live concert mix by Jack Balchin Track 11 was recorded on cassette from the audience at Cervia, 23 July 1978, live concert mix by E. M. Thomas
Volume 10: Vevey (DVD)
A rare 75-minute video recording of Henry Cow performing in Vevey, Switzerland in August 1976.
01. "Beautiful As ..." (Cutler, Frith) – 6:50 02. "Vevey 1" (Born, Cooper, Cutler, Frith, Hodgkinson, Krause) – 8:49 03. "Terrible As ..." (Cutler, Frith) – 2:19 04. Tim speaks – 1:04 05. "No More Songs" (Ochs arr. Frith) – 3:48 06. "Living in the Heart of the Beast" (Hodgkinson) – 16:57 07. "Vevey 2" (Born, Cooper, Cutler, Frith, Hodgkinson, Krause) – 13:51 08. "March" (Frith) – 2:42 09. "Erk Gah" (Hodgkinson) – 18:28
Georgie Born – bass guitar, cello Lindsay Cooper – bassoon, oboe, recorder, sopranino saxophone, piccolo, piano Chris Cutler – drums Fred Frith – guitar, violin, xylophone, piano, tubular bells Tim Hodgkinson – organ, alto saxophone, clarinet Dagmar Krause – voice
Recorded 25 August 1976, Vevey, Switzerland, concert mixed by Joel Schwartz
Bonus CD: A Cow Cabinet of Curiosities
A limited edition CD given to subscribers of the box set. The title alludes to the name of Bob Drake's band, Cabinet of Curiosities.
Chris Cutler – all tracks, piano (track 10), voice (track 12) Fred Frith – all tracks, voice (track 12) Tim Hodgkinson – all tracks, voice (track 12) John Greaves – tracks 1-10,12, voice (track 12) Geoff Leigh – tracks 1,2,6, voice (track 1) Lindsay Cooper – tracks 3-5,7-12, voice (track 12) Dagmar Krause – tracks 4,8-10
Guests Peter Blegvad – clarinet (track 7) Anthony Moore – mounted and amplified tuning forks (track 7)
Tracks 1,2 were recorded in Henry Cow's rehearsal space by Jack Balchin, probably 1972 Tracks 3-6 were extracted from a forgotten tape from 1978 which surfaced while this box set was being compiled Track 7 is an out-take from In Praise of Learning mixed by Tim Hodgkinson at Cold Storage in 1984 Tracks 8-10 were recorded at a pubic concert for NDR Jazz Workshop, Hamburg, 26 March 1976 Track 11 recorded at a pubic concert at Sendesaal, Studio F, Radio Bremen, 22 March 1978, produced by Bernd Meier Track 12 is an extract from an Unrest out-take mixed by Tim Hodgkinson at Cold Storage in 1984
There are bands whose finest work allows its roots full exposure while burying them. Henry Cow was one of these, emerging at a time of widespread upheaval and making bold new statements and fashioning order of the resultant chaos. Yet, the full scope of this 1970s group’s accomplishments is only now being celebrated, thanks to the 40th anniversary box set from ReR Megacorp. The label has a history of producing similarly fine compendiums, most notably from groups such as Faust, Art Bears and This Heat, but the Cow set is a more ambitious project, befitting the band’s complex style and legacy. With roots deep in the multi-hued music of the late 1960s that it would be a misleading oversimplification to call progressive rock, Fred Frith, Chris Cutler, Tim Hodgkinson and Cow’s less permanent membership crafted an all-inclusive music that managed to remain its own, stubbornly refusing to allow fickle taste and industry standards to dictate their choices; this set is the most complete documentation of their journey. Its three-volume layout encompasses nine discs and one DVD of live material. The first two (The Road Vols. 1-5 from 1971-1976 and The Road Vols. 5-10 1976-1978, respectively) present a chronological live survey, while the third, Studio, contains remastered versions of Henry Cow’s studio catalog. The set can be seen as a series of aural snapshots, sometimes out of strict chronological order. As with their Concerts album but on a much larger scale, the collection documents the band’s revised and reestablished identity.
Henry Cow’s 10-year existence and that of its various offshoots are well documented and won’t be rehashed here (a fine chronology is available in John Kellman’s All About Jazz review of this set). What follows is not directed at the new listener, though I hope it raises interest. I will focus on the sound of these recordings, both as historical and stylistic landmarks and as presented in their newly refurbished guises.
The music is taken from many disparate sound sources. Concerts exemplifies only one portion of what was a monumental decade-long development, a winding path with sudden twists and turns as diverse as the set’s accompanying written narratives. Certain phases and facets of the group’s career are only documented by audience recordings, others by the BBC and by similarly enterprising broadcasters; some weren’t documented at all. Long-time fans and seasoned Henry Cow collectors, for whom this set is most certainly assembled, will have heard the lion’s share of this material on bootlegs. Here, they’ve been edited and restored by sonic wizard Bob Drake, whose excellent remastering work can be heard on the Art Bears and Faust boxes. He worked on the project for over four years, as many of the sources were in an alarming state of decay. Pitch and noise adjustments were often necessary, and in some instances, judicious remixing was used, so long as it did not interfere with the character of the source. The results of his labors allow fresh insight into the band’s innovative working habits, in both improvised and composed contexts.
The first box is full of such revelations. A case in point involves the BBC sessions of 1972 and 1973, which predate the release of Leg End, the band’s debut album. It was always apparent that the attention to timbre, arrangement and fractured time that would come to define the band’s improvised and compositional aesthetic are present, and now they can be heard in near-perfect detail, unlike the hissy and muffled bootleg versions. The interplay of Frith’s guitar and John Greeves’ rhythmically snapped bass in the introduction to “Rapt in a Blanket” now come off as almost orchestral, where before they exuded a rather bland and pedestrian air. “Rapped” is certainly a pop tune, one of several that Frith wrote when, he states in the liners, he was attempting to emulate Robert Wyatt in Soft Machine. Indeed, the keyboards that quietly inform the second verse do conjure shades of Mike Ratledge, as does Tim Hodgkinson’s ripping organ solo as “Came to See You” jumps into high gear. Cutler’s drumming drives each time shift and extended section forward with fairly traditional trapswork that nevertheless demonstrates his now-customary timbral invention. His unique approach is most evident in the cymbals, which can now be heard clearly. There is still some distortion, but the improvements are miraculous.
A similar makeover is given to the March 1976 Hamburg radio broadcast that marked bassist John Greeve’s final appearance with the band. Incorporating a very similar setlist to the roughly contemporaneous BBC session released on Concerts, the band leaves room for some extended and multifarious improvisations between each of the pieces; the rep includes Henry Cow and Matching Mole tunes, and everything is book-ended by iterations of the heart-wrenching “Beautiful as the Moon, Terrible as an Army with Banners.” This take on “Nirvana for Mice” complements the more deliberate version from the first disc, recorded for the BBC three years earlier. “Moles” and “rabbits” are used in the titles here, and “Fair as the Moon” is the band staple’s moniker in this set. Again, the sound is crystal clear, the pitch correct, and the noise all but absent.
Most shocking, though, is a May 1976 concert recorded in Trondheim Norway, when Henry Cow was a quartet, Greeves having left and singer Dagmar Krauss suffering illness. As their earlier material could not be performed, and as re-invention was their M.O., they decided to perform an entirely improvised set, in the dark and with liberal use of prerecorded tapes. Unlike many of the shows featured in the collection, Trondheim is presented in its entirety, clocking in at a little over 90 minutes. The music is some of the group’s most adventurous, ranging from stereotypically European pointillism to keyboard-driven proto-industrial densities of overwhelming magnitude. Cutler’s notes state that it is a desk recording, though my illicit copy has what seems to be an announcer’s voice introducing the group followed by applause. There is very limited dynamic range on the bootleg, all of the textures forming a huge muddle that renders it almost unlistenable. Thanks to Drake’s careful restoration, the music gains a sense of distance and of perspective, each instrument inhabiting its own space. The stereo spectrum and dynamic range are also expanded exponentially, the music ebbing and flowing in the concentric waves that must have filled the room during its performance. The final section, the slowly building Frith composition “March,” makes dynamic sense, both relieving and heightening tension, thanks to the improved soundstage on which it is allowed to breathe.
The second box completes 1976 and sees the band through to its final performances in 1978, demonstrating the way Henry Cow material was revised and reused in the process. The group sound changed when Georgie Born entered, her cello affording an additional measure of contemporary classicality. We are treated to extracts from a March 1978 Bremen radio Broadcast in which portions of Tim Hodgkinson’s composition “Erk Gah”—correctly named “Hold to the Zero Burn, Imagine”—allow comparison to the version with lyrics from the Stockholm concert of May 9, 1977. The Bremen reading emerges from a lengthy improvisation, entirely recontextualized when compared to Stockholm and to the version Hodgkinson recorded in the 1990s. The sound on both broadcasts was always quite good, but some careful noise reduction and what I take to be some added reverb has allowed each instrument to bloom, certainly a boon as the band was exploring even more intricate timbral relationships than before. The bassoon work of Lindsay Cooper takes on a new level of clarity in this remix. Early versions of Art Bears songs are also present, such as “Joan” and “On Suicide,” the latter coming from an unidentified cassette believed to be from May or June of 1977.
A fascinating sequence of events, allowing a different view of Henry Cow, comes courtesy of a show from the Melkweg, Amsterdam in December 1977. “Teenbeat” reaches the boiling point as trombonist Annemarie Roelofs and former Cow member Geoff Leigh come to the fore (Roelofs had been in the audience, and Leigh’s band Red Balune had been playing the same evening). Then, Leigh heats things up with some of his customarily anarchic tenor work, reminiscent of the 1960s New Thing that influenced him in his formative years. He’s underrepresented in the box, his brief but exciting tenure with the band yielding admittedly poor concert recordings, but this audience tape demonstrates the freewheeling excitement he generated in performance.
For these ears though, the biggest surprise on the second box is Henry Cow’s set at the first Rock in Opposition festival, which took place in London in March 1978. Cow’s opening improvisation is one of their most cacophonous and cataclysmic, a vibe continued as the quintet launches into an especially gritty version of Cooper’s “Half the Sky,” released later on the group’s final album, Western Culture. Pervasive guitar distortion throughout is enhanced by a bass-heavy recording, giving the whole weight without clarity being sacrificed.
Such a mammoth project cannot be encapsulated in a single review, so let’s move into rapid-fire mode. In the first box, you can find a late 1974 proto-rendering of the Hodgkinson-penned “Living In the Heart of the Beast,” and though heavily edited, it demonstrates the band’s interesting and very different conception of that long-form work in its earliest stages. You’re also treated to a complete version of the music accompanying the ballet “With the Yellow Half-moon and Blue Star,” a piece based on a Paul Klee painting of which only a fragment appeared on Leg End. There’s also a BBC version of “Guider Tells of Silent Airborne Machine,” a track that never appeared on any album and whose concluding melodic figures would be incorporated into the title track of Peter Blegvad’s enigmatic and whimsical Kew Rone.
The set fills in many missing historical and compositional links, and though hard-core collectors will have much of this material, the refurbished sound alone makes the set indispensable for fans. Additionally, we now have the only video of a Henry Cow performance on DVD, an outdoor show in Vevey, Switzerland from August 1976. Altogether, and taken with the subscriber bonus disc containing more rehearsals and additional concert fragments, this is a fitting monument to one of the most interesting and eclectic groups to come out of the 1970s. Though a long time in the works, this 40th Anniversary was well worth the wait.
By Marc Medwin
While modern recording technology and fast improving online distribution capability are making it easier to appreciate the full extent of today's artists' work, the same cannot be said about relatively short-lived groups from the 1970s. This is especially true of groups that, despite being in some cases remarkably influential, remain cult favorites with a relatively small but intensely dedicated fan base.
A case in point is Henry Cow, a British group that began life in 1968 but didn't release its first music until 1973. Cow created some highly innovative and joyous noise throughout its 10 year run. It was also responsible for the creation of Rock in Opposition (RIO)—a loose collective of progressive-thinking bands that initially included Italy's Stormy Six, Sweden's Samla Mammas Manna, Belgium's Univers Zero and France's Etron Fou Leloublan—which has remained in philosophical opposition to the inequities of the record industry.
Cow's relatively diminutive discography—Legend (Virgin, 1973), Unrest (Virgin, 1974), In Praise of Learning (Virgin, 1975), Concerts (Caroline, 1976) and Western Culture (Broadcast, 1979), along with the peripheral Desperate Straights (Virgin, 1975), a reciprocal collaboration with Slapp Happy in return for that group's participation on In Praise (a brief merger of the two groups, in fact)—provided plenty of fine evidence of an intrepid and experimental (albeit constantly shifting) group that emerged out of the nascent Canterbury scene which also included groups like Soft Machine and Egg.
But while Legend possesses some markers to link it to the Canterbury scene, the group's three constants—guitarist/multi-instrumentalist Fred Frith, percussionist Chris Cutler and keyboardist/saxophonist Tim Hodgkinson—quickly transcended even that broad musical categorization to become an entity that embraced, certainly more than most, author William S. Burroughs' iconic statement, "Nothing is true, everything is permitted."
The music ranged from detailed composition—approaching, at times, contemporary classical music in its rich layers and contrapuntal complexity—to flat-out free improvisation which utilized pre-recorded tapes and a wealth of instruments and sundry items that made the Henry Cow stage look more like a musical instrument yard sale.
But as extreme as Cow could be—existing, at the same time, at both ends of the composition-to-free improv continuum and everywhere in-between—it left a wealth of memorable material, including Frith's knotty "Nirvana for Mice" from Legend, his epic "Ruins," from Unrest, Hodgkinson's idiosyncratic and long-form "Living in the Heart of the Beast" and the Frith/Cutler collaboration "Beautiful as the Moon—Terrible as an Army with Banners." The latter two came from In Praise and featured, for the first time, the group's politics made literal through the introduction of lyrical content, sung by newcomer/Slapp Happy singer Dagmar Krause.
As rich and varied as Cow's recorded music is, it can't possibly tell the whole story about the group, with no shortage of composed material and alternate arrangements either unrecorded or left on the cutting room floor. The studio was an early tool for experimentation, with a myriad of overdubbing and other techniques allowing the group to create soundscapes that, at the time, couldn't be recreated live. And Cow was, indeed, a band to be experienced live—a different beast entirely that, with the exception of Concerts, went woefully undocumented. The 40th Anniversary Henry Cow Box Set, promised by Cutler for well over a decade and now finally delivered, goes a long way towards filling in various gaps in the group's musical history and painting a more complete picture of Henry Cow by sourcing material from demos, rehearsal tapes and a variety of live performances. The quality varies, but Cutler and Bob Drake's editing and mastering work is superb, making even the poorest of sound sources—some coming from audience cassette recordings—surprisingly clear and full.
The box is divided into two five-disc sets, each available separately or together—if bought together, a bonus third box is provided to house the existing Cow studio discography. The first box covers the group's earliest recordings from 1971 through to the 1976 Hamburg, Germany radio recording that was bassist John Greaves' final performance with the group. It also includes the Trondheim, Norway performance from the tour that immediately followed Greaves' departure, with the group pared down by necessity to a quartet that also included bassoonist/oboist Lindsay Cooper, who had joined the group for Unrest, replacing founding member/woodwind multi-instrumentalist Geoff Leigh.
The second box contains four CDs that follow the group through to its end in 1978, also including what is, perhaps, the gem of the entire set—a DVD of a 1976 performance in Vevey, Switzerland. Featuring Krause and newcomer Georgie Born on bass and cello in addition to Frith, Hodgkinson, Cutler and Cooper, the sextet performs material from In Praise and more, including Hodgkinson's "Erk Gah"—also known as "Hold to the Zero Burn, Imagine," later released on Hodgkinson's Each In Our Own Thoughts (Megaphone, 1994). There are more surprises still, but the bottom line is: The 40th Anniversary Henry Cow Box Set offers, for the first time, a comprehensive account of Henry Cow's breadth and depth.
For those familiar with Cow's existing discography, hearing early versions of Frith's "Teenbeat" and Hodgkinson's "Amygdala" reveal just how far the group would evolve by the time it laid these tracks down for Legend. "Pre-Teenbeat I" and "Pre-Teenbeat II," which open up the first disc (Beginnings) contain many of the markers that would end up on the finished version, but here they're sparer, germinal ideas, as is the case with an extract from Hodgkinson's "Amygdala." The 10-minute version of Frith's "Teenbeat," on the other hand, expands upon the album version with a lengthy solo from Frith and entirely new sections that embed free improvisation and odd conversational snippets, courtesy of Egg's Dave Stewart and vocalists Amanda Parsons and Ann Rosenthal—members of The Ottawa Music Company, a collective ("Rock Composer's Orchestra," according to Cutler) formed by Cutler and Stewart in 1970 that never recorded but performed with an ever-growing group of musicians from (or soon to be in) Henry Cow, Egg, Khan and Hatfield and the North. Frith's "With the Yellow Half Moon and Blue Star" was only represented by a three-and-a-half minute excerpt on Legend; here it's reproduced in its entirety, its nearly 12 minutes featuring a wild, overdriven organ solo by Hodgkinson redolent of Soft Machine's Mike Ratledge.
Beginnings also includes three previously unheard tracks—the brief but knottily arranged "Olwyn Grainger," the freely improvised "Betty McGowan" and Greaves' "Lottie Hare," a neo-classical miniature that's in sharp contrast to his more jazz-inflected "Half Asleep, Half Awake," that would appear on Unrest and also on disc two of the box (Early 2). Two unexpected vocal tracks from Frith reveal a nascent songwriter long before he began exploring shorter song-form with Art Bears and on solo albums including Gravity (Fred/ReR, 1980) and Cheap at Half the Price (Fred/ReR, 1983). Still, these were no straightforward three-chord tunes, with "Rapt in a Blanket" dabbling in irregular meters and "Came to See You" experimenting with episodic shifts in feel and complex arrangements. Both songs show the influence of Soft Machine's Robert Wyatt and, with another overdriven organ solo from Hodgkinson, Mike Ratledge.
Early 2 opens with a series of well-recorded tracks from an unknown source, largely culled from Unrest but demonstrating Cow's penchant for mixing things up in performance so that, while all the signposts of Frith's "Ruins" are there, the complexion is changed by inserting "Half Asleep" smack dab in the middle. Frith doesn't reproduce the razor's edge tone of his solo on the studio version of "Ruins," but his immense, soundscape-like replacement provides an alternate approach that's perhaps even more powerful, before dissolving into a free improv section where the guitarist's innovative approach to prepared guitar techniques are on full display—concepts that he'd mine and evolve further over the years, in ways that would position him alongside Derek Bailey for sheer audacity and textural unpredictability.
Cow's ability to combine complex composition with improvisation of reckless abandon can be heard on the 30-minute excerpt from a 1974 Halsteren, Holland show. Presaging the more concise, 13-minute vocal version of Hodgkinson's "Living in the Heart of the Beast" that immediately follows on the disc (from a 1975 performance in Paris, France that also features Krause's first appearance), in Halsteren the group—at this point a quartet, with Cutler, Frith, Greaves and Hodgkinson—intersperses individual and collective soloing with composed segments from Hodgkinson's epic piece.
The books that accompany each box represent some of the most thorough and complete start-to-finish documentation of a group ever presented in a collection of this nature. A combination of oral history, recollections (fond and otherwise) and musical references, it also provides a detailed and chronological list of gigs and recording sessions so extensive that they shine a bright light on the difference between groups today and those of decades past. Faced with the harsh reality that, today, an extensive tour is rarely more than a couple of weeks in length, modern groups often have to splinter so that individual musicians can work in enough contexts to make a living. Not that living was by any means easy (Cutler's documentation clearly lays out the expenses of running a band), but as was the case with groups like Egg (documented in Uriel and Egg: The Road to Hatfield and Beyond), for the majority of Henry Cow's existence, it was an all-consuming affair where its members focused on nothing else but the group.
The group makes wordplay out of a number of known compositions from its studio discography, nodding perhaps to the sometimes significant alterations that were made to them for a specific performance or tour. Frith's "Bittern Storm Over Ulm," from Unrest, becomes "Heron Shower Over Hamburg," while the Frith/Cutler collaboration, "Beautiful As the Moon—Terrible As an Army With Banners," from In Praise, becomes "Fair as the Moon," in the 1976 Hamburg, Germany performance that opens disc three (Hamburg). Mirroring the BBC session that opens Concerts, the tune segues into Frith's "Nirvana for Mice" (from Legend), this time "Nirvana for Rabbits," gradually descending into crazed freedom despite Cutler largely managing to keep time moving forward. A brief drum solo and bassoon intro from Cooper turn stark for "Ottawa Song" and "Gloria Gloom," the latter a song by Robert Wyatt and bassist Bill MacCormick from their Matching Mole album, Matching Mole's Little Red Record (Columbia, 1972).
Unlike Concerts, however, the group then veers off into nearly 25 minutes of largely dark-hued free improvisation that's closer to contemporary classicism than it is to free jazz. It's a lengthy ride of abstruse harmony and unpredictable textures running the gamut from no time/no changes to time and, if not exactly changes, harmonic shifts that at least provide a core, before finding their way back to the irregular-metered vamp of "Beautiful As the Moon" for an end to the 47-minute continuous set, followed by another lengthy free improvised piece, "A Heart." The disc closes with two tracks culled from 1975 audience recordings in Rome and Paris, both featuring guest Robert Wyatt singing his own "Little Red Riding Hood Hit the Road," from Rock Bottom (Virgin, 1974) and a surprising and wackily absurdist take of "We Did It Again," the iconic and repetitive Kevin Ayers song from Soft Machine's 1968 debut, Volume One (Probe).
The final two discs of the first box (Trondheim 1 and Trondheim 2) document a complete concert recorded in Trondheim, Norway on May 26, 1976. With Greaves' departure and Krause ill in Hamburg, the group had committed to a nine-city Norwegian tour. And so, rather than looking for replacements the group continued on as a four-piece—Cutler, Frith, Hodgkinson and Cooper—putting on a series of entirely improvised concerts performed largely in the dark (lit only, if at all, by candlelight). The quartet had already been experimenting with taped sounds, and here it augments the landscape with various prepared materials on tape—one tape for each musician—that, while running continuously throughout the two-hour shows, were activated at will by each player with a foot pedal, creating unexpected interjections that could drive the group in entirely different directions.
Other than a few very sketchy markers and Frith's "The March"—a two-chord, 3/4 time vamp with a quirky yet still lyrical melody that gave each concert's end greater definition—this was about as unapproachable as Henry Cow ever got, and yet amongst the densities and at times harsh realms are moments of profound beauty. The 80-minute improvisation, spread over two discs, demonstrates the kind of intuitive push-and-pull that could only come from musicians not just spending a great deal of time playing together, but also living together, with a potent ability to sometimes shift ambience and color at the drop of a dime (even if, on a practical level, that dime was hard to come by).
There are those who question the purpose of extended forays into freely improvised territory, and Henry Cow's roughly equal allegiance to spontaneity and through-composition created an at times unfathomable blend of unheard beauty and catharsis. The sheer fearlessness with which Henry Cow approached its music—whether it was the extended liberation of unfettered improvisation or the seemingly impossible challenge of learning impenetrable material like "Erk Gah"—heard performed by the group for the first time on disc six (Stockholm & Goteborg)—made it a group that, four decades on, has never been even remotely imitated, even though there are many who cite Cow as a seminal influence. Cutler's notes on the subject of improvisation are a revelation—some of the best words ever written to try to explain the hows and whys of the process:
Improvisation is not a style; it's a way of being. And although it has to be learned—like speaking a language or driving a car—it can't help you with what to say or where to go: it's more a case of learning how, not learning what. I could describe my own state of mind when improvising as a kind of forgetful attentiveness. I'm certainly not listening minutely to what anyone else is doing; I don't routinely make decisions about my own interventions and I never express myself.
In other circles, sensitivity in improvisers is praised and appreciated, but I suspect Henry Cow would—had we ever discussed the question—have dismissed that kind of sensitivity as a euphemism for Bourgeois good manners—or fear. Harmonious agreement was never our way. Where composition superimposes a past onto a present, improvisation—when it works—is pure, unencumbered, present—a vehicle for the transfiguration of time. We would leap from the struggle with our pasts into these pools of forgetting. By not looking where we were going—and not trying to go anywhere in particular—we collectively stumbled, throughout our career, into impossible, beautiful and unrepeatable music, unaccountably conjured out of the space between ourselves and our contingent public. And although we increasingly argued about our compositions and their direction of travel, our improvisations evolved wordlessly and without conflict—as if they belonged to another version of ourselves, more harmonious in spirit.
Taken from radio recordings in March, 1976 and May, 1977, Cutler and Drake fashion a "performance that could have been" on Stockholm & Goteborg, culled from a series of free improvisations, "Erk Gah," "Ottawa Song," "March," Hodgkinson's bleak and curious "A Bridge to Ruins" (a coda to "Erk Gah") and another surprise—Phil Ochs' "No More Songs." The Ochs tune is about as direct and traditional, in terms of song form, as Henry Cow ever got and was performed as a tribute to the legendary songwriter, who had died the previous year (1976). That the personnel vary throughout the disc—from the same quartet that recorded Trondheim on the Goteborg date to the sextet with Greaves on "Ottawa Song" and with newcomer Georgie Born at the Stockholm show—is irrelevant. The entire 63-minute disc feels of a oneness, as if it came from a single performance.
With the exception of "Ottawa Song," taken from the same March, 1976 show as Hamburg with John Greaves, the rest of Stockholm & Goteborg also features Georgie Born on bass and cello. While still capable of the kind of timekeeping necessary on tunes like "March" (here receiving a far clearer and definitive treatment than on Trondheim), Born's approach was often more orchestral—a contrapuntal partner to those around her in the same way that Cutler, an equally potent groove-meister (though, at times, almost impossibly so given the group's penchant for mind-boggling metric shifts), was an intrepid and imaginative colorist.
Cow continued to be extremely active following the release of 1975's In Praise of Learning, but as 1977 approached they'd not released or recorded an album of new material and, despite the evidence of evolution heard on these discs, there was considerable disagreement as to the direction in which the group was heading. There was no shortage of material—the group had yet to record "Erk Gah," and Cooper was also contributing more. However, when Cutler was asked to come up with new text for "Erk Gah" in the week before the first studio session for what would become Western Culture, it proved an impossible task and, instead, he wrote a series of shorter song texts, proposing the group record them instead. The ultimate disagreement about what Henry Cow should be resulted in those songs being collected, along with four more composed and performed solely by Frith, Cutler and Krause, as Art Bears' debut, Hopes and Fears (ReR, 1978). Meanwhile, Cooper and Hodgkinson wrote (separately and collaboratively) the material that would appear on Western Culture, with "Viva Pa Ubu" and "Slice" first appearing on the 1982 double LP, The Recommended Records Sampler, and later showing up as bonus tracks on East Side Digital's 2001 CD issue of Western Culture.
The group had, by this time, left Virgin Records, with Concerts being released by Caroline. Like Stockholm & Goteborg, disc seven (Later and Post-Virgin) again creates the semblance of what a 1977 performance might have sounded like. The inclusion of two tunes that would ultimately be associated with Art Bears—the plodding and melodically abstruse "Joan" and appropriately funereal "On Suicide," with words by Berthold Brecht put to music by Hans Eisler—show that, while Cow would ultimately dissolve over artistic differences, those differences weren't at all visible to the public. Like Soft Machine—whose best music was often driven to greater places by a tension resulting from four musicians with different musical goals—Henry Cow may well have been experiencing internal difficulties, but the music was still as compelling as ever, perhaps even more so.
The group returned to composed material from early albums, including a particularly vicious "Teenbeat 2," with some of Frith's most searing guitar playing of the box; an even more idiosyncratic "Brain Storm Over Barnsley"; and another kick at "Teenbeat 3," this time with Hodgkinson's saxophone at its most visceral. Greaves and Cutler's "Would You Prefer Us to Lie?" looks back to the group's Canterbury roots with a fuzz-drenched solo by Frith, while Cooper's episodic "Untitled Piece" challenges Hodgkinson and Frith in its complexity, foreshadowing some of the contemporary writing that would ultimately appear on her A View From The Bridge: Composed Works (Impetus, 1998). A defining characteristic of Henry Cow was its textural breadth, the result of most members being multi-instrumentalists. Frith, in addition to guitar, also played bass, violin, xylophone, piano and other percussion; Hodgkinson added clarinet and voice to his organ and alto saxophone; Cooper's jaw's harp, flute, piano and accordion augmented her more regular work on bassoon and oboe; and Cutler had already begun an early experimentation into electronics that would be more fully realized on later works including Solo: A Descent into the Maelstrom (ReR, 2001), in addition to considerable and distinctive piano work throughout the group's history.
With the group's use of tapes still a defining characteristic of its live improvisations, some of the free playing on Later and Post-Virgin is its most extreme. Repetition and the combination of piano and xylophone give a Steve Reich-like feel to the spontaneous "Chaumont 1," while Cooper and Hodgkinson join forces for "Chaumont 2," a duet that gradually finds its way to a piano-heavy take on Frith's "March" where Krause doubles the melody with Cooper's bassoon.
Disc eight (Bremen), another live performance, begins with a lengthy improvisation that, in ambience, references contemporary classical composers Krzysztof Penderecki and, at times, Gyorgy Ligeti. Henry Cow was often considered, by those trying desperately to find a label with which to pigeon-hole the group, more related to jazz because of its penchant for free improvisation. Electricity and Cutler's sometimes backbeat-driven playing also associated the group with rock—as was equally the case with fellow Rock in Opposition groups Univers Zero and Art Zoyd. But if anything, Henry Cow represented a new kind of classical chamber music; one where spontaneity was a partial component, and the instrumentation used created textures that defied those looking for tradition and convention.
While every Henry Cow studio release represented a clear evolution, Western Culture remains, in many ways, the polarizing album of the group's decade-long career. Unlike its predecessors—even In Praise, where the merger with Slapp Happy created a substantially different sound that remained recognizably Henry Cow—Western Culture's near-exclusive emphasis on composition ultimately dissolved the group. Still, while Frith would go on to pursue more song-based writing with Cutler and Krause, he was still (and remains) a distinctive writer of more complicated through-composition. He was also, despite his being categorized in the experimental and the avant-garde, a writer for whom the beauty of a strong melody was never lost—a penchant that can be heard on The Happy End Problem (Fred/ReR, 2006). As oblique as some of Bremen's "New Suite" is, with its inclusion of an extract from Hodgkinson's "Viva Pa Ubu," there's also some of Frith's most lyrical writing as well.
On the other hand, the group continued to explore the most extreme boundaries of improvisation, with the 35-minute "Die Kunste Der Orgel" as jagged as ever, and the group at this point no longer with a singer—Krause's ill health, exacerbated at times by the rancor within the group, had forced her to leave the group. Hodgkinson's description is, like Cutler's earlier writing on the nature of improvisation, eye- and ear-opening:
Henry Cow's improvisations seem to have not been about each player responding instantly to the others, but a more autonomous improvising mentality that owes something to free jazz, but transposed into an electro-acoustic sound world. Each player seems to develop their own statement in its own layer, allowing things to extend and grow alongside other things. Henry Cow improvisations are usually 'impure' in the sense that they draw on recognizable idioms; however, they often combine these in non-idiomatic and unpredictable ways. A slow melody from somewhere might be heard at the same time as a percussive line that sounds like African folk music, but there's also a piano from a contemporary chamber ensemble and some surrealist groaning filtered through a lot of distortion and reverb.
Where it works best, I feel we are drawing on our studio work in the way that we build, combine and oppose sound layers. The material is not so much treated as thematic but as sonorous; its musical content is there as a manifestation or unveiling of a sound-shape. Composing on the basis of recorded improvisation in the studio taught us to place sound material into a space of frequencies and timbres—a space also suggested by indicators like reverbs and differences of level and definition. In other words there was a certain melting together of the notion of composing with the notion of mixing.
The final audio CD (Late) is collected from performances towards the very end of Henry Cow's existence (largely from June and July, 1978, with the exception of the freely improvised "RIO," recorded at the Rock in Opposition Festival in March, 1978), and demonstrate, perhaps, where the group might have gone had it continued along the same path. "Joy of Sax" is a saxophone trio—featuring Cooper on sopranino, Hodgkinson on alto and (probably, the liners say) David Chambers—that segues into another unexpected: a brief version of Thelonious Monk's "Jackie-ing," played with a martial rhythm from Cutler that segues into another brief untitled piece by Cooper. Newcomer/trombonist Annemarie Roelofs makes this the most horn-driven disc of the box, and of Henry Cow's career. Frith's "The Herring People" is a quirky instrumental that presages Frith's early solo discs including Gravity and Speechless (ReR, 1981).
But it's another lengthy improvisation, the four-part "RIO," that is the centerpiece and cornerstone of Late. Frith's guitar playing had never sounded this jagged; the presence of three horns and Cutler's percussive maelstrom creating a feeling of chaos and, at times, impending doom. But in keeping with the heavily composed approach of Western Culture, the inclusion of both the initially rhythm-heavy but ultimately sustained beauty of "Half the Sky" and angular "Viva Pa Ubu" are fitting closers to The 40th Anniversary Henry Cow Box Set's audio discs. Still, there's another surprise in the traditional "Virgins of Illinois," placed between "Half the Sky" and "Viva Pa Ubu"—a brief piece driven by Cutler and Born but equally hovering around anarchy with Cooper's recorder, Hodgkinson's clarinet and Roelofs' trombone.
With the advent of YouTube, there seems to be no end to footage available of legacy groups. And yet, curiously, there's literally nothing to be found of Henry Cow, which makes the tenth disc in The 40th Anniversary Henry Cow Box Set—an 80-minute, professionally shot DVD of Henry Cow from an August, 1976 performance in Vevey, Switzerland—all the more of a find, and the gem amongst gems in this box set. With a representative set list from the time—"Beautiful As the Moon—Terrible As an Army With Banner," divided by a free improv, "Living in the Heart of the Beast," "No More Songs," "March" and "Erk Gah," along with another lengthy improvisation—it's shot with the group live outdoors, literally playing on the grass, with so much instrumentation that even the camera's wide angle can't capture the entire group in one shot.
While the cameras do capture everyone in the group—Born, Cooper, Cutler, Frith, Hodgkinson and Krause—Cutler's the one who commands the most attention, which will come as no surprise to anyone in attendance at his Art Bears Songbook performance with Frith, Carla Kihlstedt, Zeena Parkins, Jewlia Eisenberg and Kristin Slipp at the 2008 Festival International de Musique Actuelle Victoriaville. It's almost unbelievable to watch Cutler navigate the staggering complexities of "Living in the Heart of the Beast" and "Erk Gah" with such apparent ease. That there's no music onstage, that the players move around their respective instruments so seamlessly, and that they manage to improvise together with such abandon while, at the same time, hitting every single cue without a misstep, hammers home what the music can only but suggest when listening to it.
While Krause would go onto Art Bears with Cutler and Frith, as well as News from Babel with Lindsay Cooper, Chris Cutler and Zeena Parkins in the mid-1980s, her emergence with Henry Cow as a singer who could effortlessly sing the most oblique melodies (she first came to attention with Slapp Happy, but it was with Cow that she cemented her reputation) was of great significance. Krause's voice has always been something of an acquired taste—one which has rarely evoked ambivalence but, instead, is one that's either loved or hated. Watching her perform live, with no affectation or posing, it becomes easier to appreciate just how remarkable a singer she was with this group. These are melodies that are challenging enough to play on instruments; but the kinds of intervallic leaps and harmonic sophistication required of a singer make Krauss an undervalued and underrated singer in this history of modern music.
As is the case with Henry Cow as a whole. While the group has long been influential and retained a loyal cult following despite there being nothing new from them, other than CD reissues of their original discography, a much-maligned remix with additional instrumentation of Legend and a 2006 box set that reissued the existing discography along with a three-inch CD single featuring 12 minutes of previously unreleased live music by The Orckestra—a 12-piece group that lasted for but a brief moment in time—there's been nothing to perpetuate the group's reputation or paint a bigger picture.
If ever there were a group with a wrong to be righted, it would have to be Henry Cow. With a wellspring of unreleased material, an impressive editing and mastering job that's made even audience cassette recordings sound crystal clear, and detailed writing from every member of the group but, in particular, Cutler (who spearheaded the box set's release), The 40th Anniversary Henry Cow Box Set is the set die-hard fans have been waiting for, and a collection that, for those unfamiliar with this remarkable group, is a definitive entry point. Cutler's writing—which not only details, down to the smallest minutiae, the group's chronology, but provides one of the clearest arguments for artistic independence that's ever been published about a musical group—is just as compelling as the music. It's rare that the liner notes to a box set are so good that they beg to be read again and again because, just like the music, they reveal more each and every time. The time and effort that Cutler has clearly devoted to putting together this box set (resulting in numerous delays, but they're all worth it) pays off by making it truly one of the best collections ever released about a group that most people have never heard.
01. Industry (6:58) 02. The Decay of Cities (6:56) 03. On The Raft (4:01) 04. Falling Away (7:39) 05. Gretel's Tale (3:58) 06. Look Back (1:20) 07. Half the Sky (5:14)
Tim Hodgkinson / organs, Alto sax, clarinet, Hawaiian guitar (1,2), piano (3) Lindsay Cooper / bassoon, oboe, Soprano sax, Sopranino recorders Fred Frith / electric & acoustic guitars, bass, Soprano sax (3) Chris Cutler / drums, electric drums, noise, piano (4), trumpet (3)
with Anne-Marie Roelofs / trombone, violin Irene Schweizer / piano (5) Georgie Born / bass (7)
Western Culture was Henry Cow's farewell album, recorded after a protracted break during which they had become independent from Virgin Records, Chris Cutler had laid the foundations for what were to become Rock In Opposition and Recommended Records and they'd already decided to split. Much of the material which was to become the first Art Bears album had already been recorded before the band decided that the material wasn't 'Henry Cow', although the closing track 'Half The Sky' came from these sessions. With all this turmoil it's surprising that an album was made at all, and in a way it's ironic that this least showbizzy of bands should have followed the old showbiz maxim 'save the best till last'.
Western Culture is Henry Cow's most coherent album - the only one to feature only composed pieces, the only purely instumental album and the album on which Lindsay Cooper emerged as a talented composer in her own right, as well as a great musician. In creative terms, the album is a 50/50 split between Tim Hodgkinson, who wrote tracks 1 - 3 (side 1 of the vinyl original) and Lindsay Cooper (who wrote or co-wrote the remainder).
Hodgkinson's pieces on side 1 really blend into a seamless whole - brass and reeds play a prominent part here, with relatively little electric guitar but with acoustic guitar featuring prominently for the first time on a Henry Cow album. Special mention should be made of guest musician Anne Marie Roelofs, a Dutch musician who had played with them on stage, and who added some warm, blurry trombone lines to complement Cooper's bassoon - her playing is particularly effective on 'Industry' and 'The Decay Of Cities'. These compositions are a continuation of the compositional style first heard on 'Living In The Heart Of The Beast', with more of a jazz element (perhaps as a result of Henry Cow's work with the Mike Westbrook Orchestra and the Art Ensemble Of Chicago). They evoke a decaying urban landscape, with the closing piece 'On The Raft' giving a more optimistic tone with huge brass/reed chords played over a lazy tempo, the whole never quite settling into the comfortable orthodoxy that seems to be promised.
Lindsay Cooper's compositions are a more diverse selection, drawing on contemporary classical and avant garde influences. 'Falling Away' is probably the track that is closest to the avant rock style normally associated with Henry Cow. 'Gretel's Tale' features an astonishing piano contribution by Irene Schweizer, almost like John Cage plying free jazz. 'Half The Sky' takes its title from a famous quotation from Chairman Mao, also cited by John Lennon on 'Woman' a couple of years later - appropriate for a musician who would go on to be a key player in the Feminis Improvising Group.
The key players in Henry Cow continued to work together in various configurations over the years, and released a lot of fine music and exerted a massive influence on the more left field aspects of progressive rock. Odd tracks have since emerged on compilations, but there have been no reunion tours and no 'greatest hits'. Their final press release said that they would not be trapped into reproducing their past in order to secure their future, and they have been as good as thir word. Western Culture is a fitting end to a remarkable career, and is an essential album of its genre.
