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Concerts - Remastered

by

Henry Cow

 
Concerts - Remastered
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Avg: 4.0 (25 ratings)

A live set from the most serious prog pariahs you'll ever meet.

  • We Say...

    Review by Mark Paytress

    Few bands were ever more serious about their music than Henry Cow. Prog pariahs both ideologically (their work was informed by Socialist principles) and musically, despite classical and jazz training, they eschewed prog orthodoxy in favor of highly disciplined, jazz-inspired material interspersed by lengthy improvised pieces. Concerts, originally a two-LP set recorded live in 1974 and '75, provides the ideal entrée into Cow's distinctive and distinguished sonic world. The opening 24-minute medley, taped for the BBC, is quintessential Cow with Robert Wyatt guesting on his own "Gloria Gloom," and Fred Frith turning in a guitar break not a million miles away from Mike Oldfield. Deeper into the set, the arrangements fall away, replaced by pure on-the-night inspiration. The 28-minute "Oslo" gets particularly intense, with howls, Hoover-like bass and ricocheting, plink-plonk guitar before a clarinet brings a sense of serene improv back to the piece.

  • They Say...

    Review by Rick Anderson, All Music Guide

    Avant-garde rock & roll of 1970s vintage -- especially, it must be said, of the British variety -- doesn't typically age very well. And although Henry Cow was quite a unique ensemble, even by the standards of the 1970s avant-garde, it would be silly to deny that much of the music captured on these two live discs (originally released on LP in 1976) sounds pretty dated. But this is much more true of the song-based material than the more free-form, improvised music, which still sounds remarkably fresh and surprising 25 years later. And even the more period-specific material is of very high quality: singer Dagmar Krause (previously of Slapp Happy, later of the Art Bears) delivers fine performances on "Beautiful As the Moon/Terrible As an Army With Banners" and "Bad Alchemy," as does pianist John Greaves. On the second disc, guitarist Fred Frith tends to dominate, much to the music's benefit; for the most part, the sound is strictly abstract with Frith employing many of the extended guitar techniques that he would later expand and amplify in his solo work and in his duets with Henry Kaiser. The woodwinds and piano lend an almost classical feel to some of these tracks. It's probably not for everyone, but this really is great stuff.

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