Henry Cow - Western Culture (Vinyl)

Descriere

British progressive pioneers Henry Cow (who actually didn't take their name from early Twentieth-Century American composer Henry Cowell) gave birth to a whole school of bands whose uncompromisingly anti-commercial musical stance had less to do with punk's DIY ethic than with Theodore Adorno's argument that radical ideas require radical forms of expression. Like Robert Wyatt, the members of Henry Cow were openly communist, but they partook of a somewhat academic, insular communism, whereby mainstream bourgeois culture - perceived as an essential foundation for unfair economic practices - comes under attack despite the potential such a strategy has for alienating those in the lower and middle classes who enjoy this same culture being rejected. As so often occurs with self-conscious experimentalists, Henry Cow's version of radical music-making placed them in the vanguard not of the culture at large but of a vibrant artistic sub-culture.Although the Rock-In-Opposition "collective" wasn't formed until 1977, it has become so inextricably linked with Henry Cow in the public-consciousness that it deserves early mention. Basically a loose confederation of musically and politically like-minded (but by no means uniform) bands from all over Europe, R.I.O. was perhaps principally intended to facilitate the organization of gigs and collaborative efforts for the artists involved (among them Art Zoyd, Univers Zero, Stormy Six, Zamla Mammaz Manna, Aksaq Maboul, and Etron Fou), but it soon came to signify other things too. Henry Cow was founded in 1968 by then-students Tim Hodgkinson (organ, piano, clarinet, etc.) and Fred Frith (guitar and sundry noisemakers). It was soon joined by bassist John Greaves, saxophonist and flutist Geoff Leigh, and drummer Chris Cutler. After LegEnd, Leigh was replaced by bassoonist and oboe player Lindsay Cooper, and former Slapp Happy singer Dagmar Krause was in the band during 1975-76. Henry Cow were touring heavily over Europe from '76 to '78. The Cow then recorded this, their swan song. The band members had regrettably matured enough by this point to no longer care much for putting socks on their album covers. Whatever disappointment this may have engendered in long-time fans was quickly forgotten once they heard the music, which is surely the most advanced and consistently rewarding that Cow ever put to tape. Consisting of two entirely instrumental side-long suites, composed by Hodgkinson ("History and Prospects") and Cooper ("Day by Day"), respectively, Western Culture is possibly the finest, most persuasive argument available for the desirability and feasability of a rock/classical fusion. By turns menacing and melancholy, intricately contapuntal and rhythmically elastic, aggressively propulsive and mournfully dirge-like, Western Culture is a work of total focus and group cohesion - and is all the more remarkable an accomplishment for being achieved just before Henry Cow's dissolution.