The Canterbury Appreciation Thread

song_of_copper wrote: Hello all. This is mostly for Patrick's benefit, but still... yes. Hello all. Just swinging by to say that I acquired National Health's 'Of Queues and Cures' the other day - just had a first listen on the way to work and... ...I LOVE it! It goes so well with a crisp English Autumn morning...

I will echo the others in that I wouldn't be in too much of a hurry to acquire other NH recordings, unless you become an obsessive like myself. 

^Canterbury was never a "version" of RIO

Henry Plainview wrote: So I finally got around to looking up Soft Machine on Youtube...and why didn't anyone tell me Moon in June and To Nick Everyone were so good? I always thought of Canterbury as the soft, twee/jokey version of RIO. Was I wrong?

NaturalScience wrote: Henry Plainview wrote: So I finally got around to looking up Soft Machine on Youtube...and why didn't anyone tell me Moon in June and To Nick Everyone were so good? I always thought of Canterbury as the soft, twee/jokey version of RIO. Was I wrong? Yes.  Well, I'll be honest, and I don't mean to insult their fans, but I can see how a group like Caravan might give off that impression - they are the most light and "playful" of the Canterbury groups (though I still enjoy them thoroughly).  But there is absolutely nothing twee about Soft Machine's Third or National Health.  Hatfield is playful as well but the musicianship is top rate. If I had to recommend some albums based on where you're coming from (the RIO/Avant vector)... Soft Machine - Third Egg - The Polite Force National Health - Of Queues and Cures and my non-English "Canterbury" favorite Picchio dal Pozzo - Abbiamo Tutti I Suoi Problemi which is admittedly more RIO than Canterbury in my opinion.

Edited by Henry Plainview - November 03 2008 at 16:28

June wrote: Motherload number 2!   Still very, very impressed by the trollfreeness of your forum. well...troll minimization, at any rate, is what we strive for.    I only managed to get through about half of this thread, but I've got a couple of hundreds bucks worth of album titles written down. Thanks guys! (or not... not sure ) Please purchase much Canterbury and discuss it here.  (and then check out the RIO/Avant Centre)

James wrote: Henry Plainview wrote: So I finally got around to looking up Soft Machine on Youtube...and why didn't anyone tell me Moon in June and To Nick Everyone were so good? I always thought of Canterbury as the soft, twee/jokey version of RIO. Was I wrong? To Nick Everyone is from Wyatt's debut album The End of an Ear. This album, in my opinion, isn't Canterbury but avant-prog.  It's like the precursor to RIO.  Another album is Hugh Hopper's 1983. Matching Mole are also more avant-aligned than Canterbury.

June wrote: If you'll excuse my trollness... what's RIO? Compared to the Canterbury scene, that is.

A brief history.

June wrote: NaturalScience wrote: June wrote: If you'll excuse my trollness... what's RIO? Compared to the Canterbury scene, that is. A brief history.   Okay then, thanks. I hadn't not picked up on that section yet. I'd already heard a few tracks from 5 or 6 bands mentionned, but hadn't figured out that they were in any way "related". So if I get this right, it's more of a "political" organisation of avant-garde bands than anything while the Canterbury scene is mainly geographically based? Unless the Canterbury bands had some "treaty" too that I haven't read about so far?

No, that's pretty much it, although the "Canterbury" moniker has always been a bit unfortunate as pretty much none of the musicians had much to do with the town city of Canterbury, located in eastern Kent in the South East region of England, you can read more at the wiki entry

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canterbury_scene

There was also some overlap, the RIO movement was founded by Henry Cow, who are sometimes also considered a Canterbury band...the true narrow definition of RIO was the small group of bands during the late 70s, "avant prog" is the more (appropriate) generic label for a certain kind of wacky music.

Henry Cow's first album is one I find to be a natural transition to RIO/Avant when coming from the Canterbury scene (data point = myself).  But if you've heard samples from Belgian chamber prog masters Univers Zero or Present, well then jump right in!





Edited by NaturalScience - November 07 2008 at 15:20

fixed mr. pedant

Raff wrote: Canterbury a softer version of RIO? Now I've really heard it all...

Not far from the mark as far as I'm concerned : Robert Wyatt's End Of An Ear, Hugh Hopper's 1984 are definitely early forms of RIO. Whilst Henry Cow's Legend, takes its lead from Machine's Volume2 (and one reason I bought the album, after they won John Peel's Rockatunity Knocks competition)..