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Joined: August 29 2011
Location: Troy
Status: Offline
Points: 7251
Posted: August 21 2016 at 03:31
Love Unrest and Free Jazz doesn't disturb me. I realized very soon that jazz ( free or not) was a compulsory element of my listening of rock music. My favorite artists or bands : Bowie ( "Thee" white soul singer in my opinion), Zappa, Magma, Can or Kraut (German modern blues), the brazilian Tom Ze or and Canterbury of course, use harmonies, sounds or rhythms of black music. It brings an incomparable heat to contemporary music compositions. I think that Henry Cow or Zappa would remain completely hermetic to the public without it.
Joined: September 03 2005
Location: Olympus Mons
Status: Offline
Points: 15916
Posted: August 21 2016 at 03:34
The Cow vinyls are very special things to own. I bought all 5 over the course of a few years in the 90's. I found Western Culture and Unrest to be the hardest to get hold of.
While crate digging in London just over a week ago, one of the stores had a seperate category for Henry Cow... With two albums... Two reissues. IPOL for 20 quid and Concerts for 25. Strangely, despite only having LegEnd on vinyl, I didn't go for either. I'll be trying to get Unrest now.
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Yeah, another album that I find really similar to Out To Lunch is This Is Our Music from Ornette Coleman's Quartet. As much as free jazz forged a part of Henry Cow's sound, I'd rather point towards European artists like Peter Brötzmann. Not only in a style of improvisation, but at the very beginning of "Teenbeat Introduction", I can hear that distinctive Brötzmann sax overblow. But yeah, I can also hear Dolphy in Cow. Also some Albert Ayler. Sometimes even Sun Ra from his most experimental, free era.
Edited by ALotOfBottle - August 21 2016 at 09:21
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And of course the fine classical music: Bartok (whose book on composition helped Frith on some of the tracks on Unrest, but also "An Extract from 'With a Yellow Half Moon...'" seems to have a very Euro folky feel to it, something Bartok investigated), Hindemith (I can hear him on Unrest, too), Stravinsky (Western Culture, Unrest), Messiaen, Schoenberg (previously mentioned plus tiny hints on Legend), Cage (most of the material they played live before Western Culture, that is, improvised music, related to Cage's chance music), and many more...
The piece "Nine Funerals of Citizen King", my favorite from Cow, is so great. If you actually analyze it, it does not seem to have a static time signature and I can't really work it out musically, as for influences. I'm thinking 18th century European folk, maybe hints of classical music. What do you think?
Edited by ALotOfBottle - August 21 2016 at 11:57
Categories strain, crack and sometimes break, under their burden - step out of the space provided.
Joined: September 03 2005
Location: Olympus Mons
Status: Offline
Points: 15916
Posted: August 22 2016 at 03:49
Wow - what influences Frith and Co. had. I never spent much (any TBH) time with those composer's music. Very uneducated fellow here..........haven't even heard any Dolphy or Ornette.........
Joined: September 01 2010
Location: Sohar, Oman
Status: Offline
Points: 1399
Posted: August 22 2016 at 05:44
Tom Ozric wrote:
Thanks guys - all in good time
Same here - it's stuff I have heard of but never got around to... It's also another reason why the Cow are such a great band - as a teenager, they opened up my listening in a way that no other band has done.
I've just finnished listening to LegEnd for approximately the millionth time. Christ, music does not get any better than this (and one other album that you all know I love), for me. I hope it won't be taken as childish, but I even let out a tear on "Nine Funerals Of Citizen King." I could not help myself, the atmosphere was so tense. I almost felt as if I were... Far away from home, watching the whole July Revolution, the architecture of the burning cities, the Citizen King escaping to England and living his life in the countryside as "Mr. Smith" (Tom, remember that "plane-like" sound at the end? to me it kind of represents of what I mentioned), the conspiracy theory of William Wordsworth working with the King Louis-Philippe and the mama of dada, Gertrude Stein. Sheeet, this piece is something. I hope I don't sound like a madman there.
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Joined: August 29 2011
Location: Troy
Status: Offline
Points: 7251
Posted: August 24 2016 at 03:02
Not a all. I bought the vinyl yesterday. Great moment ! More space in the music, more details. It becomes harder and harder to listen to my Cd's. And I own more than 2000 Cd's and barely 150 vinyls ! But start all over again is not a problem (excepted for money). I learnt that the most important records of my life were not the ones that I thought.
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