Biography
Henry Cow epitomize
the Rock in Opposition sub-genre, both in their status as founders
of the movement, and in their uncompromisingly modernist attitude:
"Radical politics demand radical music." Strangely, they
only gradually evolved into what most people think of as the
"RIO sound"; their first album, Leg End, is very jazzy,
with strong ties to the Canterbury scene. As they continued,
though, elements of noise began to come to the foreground, and
the melodies became more angular and chromatic, with their final
album Western Culture being essentially jazz-tinged modernist
classical music for an extended rock band instrumentation.
In the mid-70s, they teamed up with cabaret-rockers Slapp Happy
to produce two albums, of which Desperate Straights is
more a Slapp Happy album with Henry Cow helping out. In
Praise of Learning, however, is a true Henry Cow statement,
with noisy free improv facing off against complex composed pieces,
and the addition of a real vocalist (the infamous Dagmar Krause)
allowing the band to voice their Marxist politics through lyrics
as well as music. Tim Hodgkinson's epic "Living in the
Heart of the Beast," with its abruptly shifting moods, spiky
counterpoint and anti-capitalist lyrics, could be considered
the ultimate Henry Cow statement.
After IPoL,
things became problematic. Slapp Happy dissolved, and
Dagmar Krause joined Henry Cow. Arguments started to arise:
some members wanted to focus more on song-based material, while
others wanted to write extended pieces. Rather than attempt
to compromise, the band split up in 1978, releasing Tim Hodgkinson's
and Lindsay Cooper's longer instrumentals as Western Culture,
and Fred Frith's and Chris Cutler's more song-oriented work
as the first Art Bears album, Hopes and Fears.
Henry Cow is still alive in a sense, though, as most of the
ex-Cow musicians are still active in the avant-prog/experimental
scene, with Cutler writing lyrics and playing percussion for
Biota and the Science Group, Frith's music being recorded by
ensembles such as the Arditti Quartet, Hodgkinson releasing
electro-acoustic chamber music on RéR, and so on.
- Alex
Temple [November 2001]
Unrest
(1974)
When I first started
getting into Henry Cow, Western Culture seemed the obvious
choice as their best album: it was entirely composed, and quite
tightly at that -- not a note out of place. I'm still
willing to admit that Unrest is much freer in construction
than that album; in fact, the formalist in me took a while to
get used to its somewhat more rhapsodic affect, and I found
it somewhat baffling at first. Over time, though, Unrest
has come to seem just as good as Western Culture, and
at times I even prefer it.
In fact, it may
be that Unrest's less strict construction is its strong
point. While "Ruins," easily closest piece here to later Cow,
is a very good composition, it's just not at the level of Cooper's
and Hodgkinson's contibutions on the following two studio albums.
(This may be because Frith was not as developed a composer in
the 70s as were his two bandmates, though he did go on to write
some wonderful music later.) Indeed, the stark textures
that dominate the song seem a bit unfilfilling next to its companions
on side one, the anarchic "Bittern Storm over Ulm" and the sensuous
"Half Asleep; Half Awake."
"Bittern Storm
over Ulm" is actually quite a surprise for someone working his
way backwards through the band's discography: a catchy, cheerful
jazz-rock piece over which is laid a wild, arhythmic guitar
solo from Frith. There's also a rare moment of humor about
one and a half minutes in, where, just for a few measures, the
band claps along with its own constantly shifting meters.
By contrast, "Half Asleep; Half Awake" is a somewhat somber
and transcendently beautiful piece, John Greaves' last composition
for the band and up there with "Living in the Heart of the Beast"
as a contender for Henry Cow's best single track. It's
replete with jazzy (tonal!) piano playing, Canterbury-style
organ, blurty bassoon solos and melodies that hit just the right
balance so that they're never predictable, but feel as if they
couldn't possibly have been written any other way. This
is one of those rare pieces where I've found myself half-remembering
a passage from the middle, and then waiting for it, constantly
surprised and startled by the subtly related melodies that never
quite resolve into the one I'm thinking of, the listener and
the piece playing an exhilharating game of delayed gratification.
Structurally precise? Not very, but it's superb nevertheless.
Except for Frith's
short (and slightly awkward, though certainly enjoyable) "Solemn
Music," the second half of Unrest consists of improvisations,
studio constructions and other things the band came up with
when they got to the recording studio and discovered that they
only had 25 minutes' worth of material. These tracks tend
to catch some flak for being boring or inchoate. To me,
though, they sound very good -- certainly better than the corresponding
tracks on the second side of In Praise of Learning.
The heavy post-production on most of it makes it more considered
than some free improv, and there's certainly quite a bit of
variety, from the invigorating chaos of "Upon Entering the Hotel
Adlon" (complete with a shriek of "YEEEAHHHHH!" at the kick-off)
to the near-ambient chamber music of "Arcades." "Linguaphonie"
augments its quiet noise and gurgling bassoons with bits of
rhythmically spoken, highly assonant French text, and, later,
some very sweet wordless vocalizations from Cooper that recall
pieces like Crumb's Madrigals.
What makes this
stuff really worthwhile, though, is the ending. "Deluge" starts
out as just some more wobbly proto-Biota, but, ever so gradually,
instruments fade into the mix. By the end of the song, they're
in full force playing some more wistful, jazz-tinged chamber
music, and just as it reaches a cadence, we get another astounding
Greaves moment: he enters, playing the piano and singing
a tune very much in the vein of Robert Wyatt's solo work, sings
a few phrases... and then, as quickly as it began, it ends,
taking the album with it and leaving the listener wondering
where the music went. It's unusually enigmatic for this
band, and it takes on extra resonance with side two's succession
of titles, evoking a magnificent hotel being overwhelmed by
water, which mutes all sound and leaves nothing but the listener,
completely alone. Even without such programmatic visuals,
it's an incredible moment, and one that's far too often overlooked
in this band's fantastic oeuvre. -
Alex Temple [October 2002]
In
Praise of Learning (1975)
You
all know Dagmar Krause's reputation. Room-clearer.
Insane. "Mrs Crazzzzzzy Squirrrrrel," as one rec.music.progressive
poster put it. I'd had the Art Bears twofer, Winter Songs
/ The World as it is Today, for ages, and I never quite
understood why everyone had such violent reactions to her.
Sure, she gets kinda hysterical on "Rats and Monkeys," but nothing
too shocking, really.
Then I got In Praise of Learning.
There is no doubt in my mind that "War" is the origin of Dagmar's
reputation. She's harsh and aggressive, rolling her R's
and exaggerating her vowels, scraping holes your ear with a
stylistic icepick.
Of course, I love it.
In Praise of
Learning is a collaborative effort between Henry Cow and
cabaret-rockers Slapp Happy, and "War" could technically be
considered a Slapp Happy song, since it was written by Peter
Blegvad and Anthony Moore. It's hard to imagine that such
aggressively "out" music could be created by the same band that
gave us "I Got Evil." But members of Slapp Happy have since
said that when they worked with Henry Cow, they tried to tone
up the dissonance and experimentation so the music would better
suit Cow's musicians. The result is a weird mixture of
catchy diatonic melody and the insane vocals described above,
as well as creepy laughing noises straight out of the Beatles'
"I Am The Walrus" and a middle section that switches from noise
collage to cheerful jazzy trumpet playing halfway through.
I can't imagine a better integration of such apparently irreconcilable
styles.
"War" is followed
by the epic "Living in the Heart of the Beast," a massively
dense and complex piece by Tim Hodgkinson. This song is
as perfect an example of the RIO aesthetic as I can think of,
with its angular melodies, subtle motivic development, and violent
textural contrasts. The song abounds with brilliant moments,
from the double-tracking of Dagmar's voice in one section
to the driving and furious guitar solo later in another, from
the quiet passages of instrumental interplay scattered throughout
to the weirdly funky guitar and drum playing under the word
"fear" about halfway into the song. The song concludes
with an Art Bears-like call for a proletarian revolution against
"capital's kings who reduce [us] to coinage," and this chorus
is so stridently powerful as it fades into the distance that
it almost makes Marxism seem feasible.
And then... side
two. After such a breathtakingly excellent pair of songs, it's
not surprising that the second side pales in comparison. "Beautiful
as the Moon - Terrible as an Army with Banners," by Chris Cutler
and Fred Frith, is sort of a rocked-up early 20th-century German
art song, which is pretty good but only gets really impressive
during the apparently double-tracked piano solo near the end,
where two Friths play slightly out of sync to create a strangely
liquid effect which seems to foreshadow Ligeti's Études.
The other two tracks are highly edited group improvs. While
"Beginning: The Long March" is a rather interesting composition
of mostly ambient noise, "Morning Star" is too sparse and noodly
to hold my interest for more than a couple of minutes.
I should probably
mention that the CD I have is labelled "In Praise of Learning
(Original Mix)." I haven't heard the remixed version, but I
hear that it has a less colorful sound and a forgettable bonus
track, so I'll stick with this version. I recommend that
all you prospective buyers do the same.
- Alex Temple [October 2001]
Click
Here for Tracklist and Lineup Info
Western
Culture (1978)
If you thought
it was impossible for an album to be gloomy, propulsive, jazzy,
dissonant, angular, fluid, noisy, tranquil, militant and downright
pretty all at the same time, you should give this one a listen.
Western Culture is the final Henry Cow release, and it
represents the next logical step from In Praise of Learning:
an entirely composed album. The noodly free improv that
the band indulged in previously is almost completely gone; and
when it does pop up, it's very controlled, as in the squonky
sax work hidden behind the strident displaced triads of "½
the Sky" or the skittery avant-jazz piano solo in the middle
of "Gretel's Tale." Instead, we get three tracks of Tim
Hodgkinson's weird combination of drunken jazz chords and spiky
free atonality, followed by three tracks of Lindsay Cooper's
slightly more restrained, post-Stravinskian chamber fusion.
The final track finds them collaborating -- appropriately, its
name is a reference to the Chinese (?) proverb, "women hold
up half the sky."
Although there
is a certain harmonic and timbral uniformity to the album, there
is actually a good deal of variety that may not be apparent
at first listen. Some songs, like "Industry" and "Falling
Away," fit the general conception of the RIO style perfectly
-- angular, dissonant, uncompromising, with a chamber music
vibe and a slight jazz tinge. "Industry" is particularly
thorny, thanks to Hodginskon's whining organ and Chris Cutler's
pots-and-pans drumming. "The Decay of Cities," on the
other hand, is downright consonant at times, with sections of
almost tonal acoustic guitar work contrasting with funereal
trombone passages, grumblings of noise and upbeat jazzy fragments;
even the most hard-core anti-experimentalist would probably
enjoy at least the first minute of the song. The brief
"Look Back" may be even more surprising to those familiar with
Henry Cow's reputation for aggressive avant-gardism: this bittersweet
chamber piece for guitar, winds and strings has more in common
with the mid-1920s modernist scene than with anything post-war.
Western Culture
is certainly Henry Cow's most cohesive and consistent statement.
I suppose some people might miss the furor of In Praise of
Learning, or be put off the aforementioned uniformity.
I can also see some validity in the argument that both sides
end a bit abruptly, not giving the listener a powerful dramatic
climax during which he has time to think "wow, this album kicks
ass" just before it ends. But to me, this is a truly wonderful
meeting point of rock, jazz and classical music, and there's
an enormous amount of beauty here if you're willing to make
the slight effort necessary to get past the album's introverted
quality. - Alex Temple [November 2001]
