Recommend Henry Cow Albums?
Printed From: Progarchives.com
Category: Progressive Music Lounges
Forum Name: Prog Recommendations/Featured albums
Forum Description: Make or seek recommendations and discuss specific prog albums
URL: http://www.progarchives.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=13553
Printed Date: March 06 2025 at 06:58
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Topic: Recommend Henry Cow Albums?
Posted By: A Guy
Subject: Recommend Henry Cow Albums?
Date Posted: October 25 2005 at 15:43
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Is this the right place for this topic? Anyway, I bought the Henry Cow album "In Praise of Learning" recently and thought it was great, especially after listening attentively to it all the way through. So I was wondering which Henry Cow album I should get next. Which one do you think is the best? (And I'm not interested if people are going to start saying "Henry Cow is rubbish", I just want an actual answer! |
)Replies:
Posted By: Syzygy
Date Posted: October 25 2005 at 17:37
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The short answer is: all of them. Leg End is their jazziest and probably most accessible album. Unrest contains their most fearsomely complex composition, Ruins. Half of the album is composed, half is studio improv. Dark and sometimes disturbing, it's my personal favourite. Desperate Straits is the other album they made with Slapp Happy, very song oriented. It sounds like the cabaret band from Mars. Concerts includes an excellent Peel session, selections from a concert with Robert Wyatt and some very intense live improvisations. Western Culture is their only wholly instrumental album and features Lindsay Coopers debut as a composer. Essential. Start with Western Culture and work back, through and around to Art Bears, Fred Frith, Greaves and Blegvad's masterful Kew.Rhone and much else besides. Enjoy! ------------- 'Like so many of you I've got my doubts about how much to contribute to the already rich among us...' Robert Wyatt, Gloria Gloom |
Posted By: Catholic Flame
Date Posted: October 25 2005 at 17:43
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Leg End is very good -- Nirvana For Mice is one of the best songs on it. If you like Henry Cow you may want to try the group Blast also. ------------- “Great things are not accomplished by those who yield to trends and fads and popular opinion.” ~Jack Kerouac |
Posted By: Evolver
Date Posted: October 25 2005 at 17:54
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Unrest was the first I bought. It's still my favorite. ------------- Trust me. I know what I'm doing. |
Posted By: RoyalJelly
Date Posted: October 26 2005 at 07:40
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I would say Concerts is my favorite, it has some pieces from "In Praise of Learning", but far better, and a lot of other gorgeous songs. "Western Culture" is all instrumental, and brilliant. I just discovered a Tim Hodgkinson album called "Each in Our Own Thoughts" that has a newer recording of a lengthy Henry Cow piece that they used to perform live, but never recorded, still with Dagmar Krause and Chris Cutler, fantastic. The Art Bears "Winter Songs" is also highly recommended, there's nothing like it, and it's influenced some newer bands like Sleepytime Gorilla Museum. For a modern take on Cow aesthetics listen to the first Science Group album, it has Fred Frith and Cutler, and is like a post-modern update, with a bit more humourous elements (never Cow's strong point). |
Posted By: Persona
Date Posted: October 26 2005 at 08:12
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For me, Unrest its the album, and Half Asleep, Half Awake the song. Try Western Culture too... ------------- Le pregunte, y su sonrisa se desprendio desgarrando al aire. |
Posted By: Elta31
Date Posted: October 26 2005 at 09:53
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Posted By: Phil
Date Posted: October 26 2005 at 10:08
Just picked up on this thread. I've got Leg End which I think is excellent, was thinking of getting either Western Culture or Unrest next. Sounds like I'll probably end up with them all!! |
Syzygy wrote:Posted By: Trotsky
Date Posted: October 26 2005 at 12:05
That's frightening ... I think it took me two years to get into it!  ...But now I really dig it ... although I can't offer much advice seeing as how it's still the only full HC album I've heard ... ------------- "Death to Utopia! Death to faith! Death to love! Death to hope?" thunders the 20th century. "Surrender, you pathetic dreamer.” "No" replies the unhumbled optimist "You are only the present." |
Posted By: oliverstoned
Date Posted: October 26 2005 at 12:25
| Start with Legend and Unrest. The "Ruin" piece on Unrest is excellent. |
Posted By: A Guy
Date Posted: October 26 2005 at 13:07
| Okay. |