Henry Cow

Joining forces with fellow countrymen Slapp Happy, England's Henry Cow recorded their masterpiece between January and May 1975. "In Praise Of Learning" was a tormented work, put together at a time when, following the founding of "Rock In Opposition" (a European movement for artistic self-management), the band (in dire financial straits) were touring around Europe, playing material largely drawn from their two previous albums ("Legend", 1973; "Unrest", 1974 – both excellent works, in which jazz-rock clearly indebted to the Canterbury scene was charged with strongly destabilizing overtones, in the wake of the collage techniques of Frank Zappa and the hermetic noise-making of Faust).

The material recorded during that period reveals a truly impressive artistic maturity. Even though much of the critical establishment had labelled the band a "free-band" for their often iconoclastic taste in improvisation, their compositions were anything but formless. As leader Fred Frith would state to the weekly magazine "Time Out" in 1976: "Henry Cow's music was, paradoxically, far more structurally organized than that of any other rock band."

At this point in their career, the band – founded in Canterbury in 1968 – consisted, besides the aforementioned Frith (guitar, violin, xylophone, piano), of Tim Hodgkinson (organ, clarinet, piano), John Greaves (bass, piano), Chris Cutler (drums, radio) and Lindsay Cooper (oboe, bassoon). Slapp Happy, meanwhile, were made up of Dagmar Krause (vocals), Peter Blegvad (guitar, vocals, clarinet) and Anthony Moore (piano, electronics and tapes). During the sessions, however, there were also invaluable contributions from Geoff Leigh (soprano sax), Phil Becque (oscillator) and the great Mongezi Feza (whose trumpet had already been admired on "Rock Bottom", the masterpiece by Robert Wyatt).

The opening track, "War" (2'31") – dating back to a November 1974 recording made during the "Unrest" sessions – immediately highlights the vaguely "song-based" contribution of Slapp Happy. A dark, aggressive lied, "War" lives entirely on the emotional tension between Krause's spasmodically deranged voice – in an icy take on "Sprechstimme" (a vocal style poised between singing and narration) – and the "dynamic" balance of the instrumental parts: a brass-band progression; a cacophonous interlude of clarinet, hissing electronics and radio frequencies; tribal-jazz drumming and a creeping trumpet solo. In 1993, the Fall would record their own version, included on the album "Middle Class Revolt". The lyrics are as politically charged as anything from this period. But while "War" still carries a strong "metaphorical" component, the following "Living In The Heart Of The Beast" (16'18") strips away much of that obscurity. The epic scale of the language mirrors the epic scale of the music.

In 1976, in an interview with "Impetus" magazine, Frith put it this way: "We don't make political statements passively. We're doing what so-called revolutionary artists don't do, which is expanding the boundaries of our medium. Music is our work, our art. We change the music by introducing our messages into it, and over time this has a revolutionary effect." It's no coincidence that the back cover of "In Praise Of Learning" bore a quote from John Grierson, according to whom "art is not a mirror, it is a hammer", underlining the desire to improve things rather than simply reflect them (in perfect harmony, then, with Marxist theories on the socio-political commitment of art).

Beyond any "political" value, however, the greatness of Henry Cow/Slapp Happy remains inextricably tied to their music, of which "Living In The Heart Of The Beast" represents the creative peak. In this track, all of the band's influences reach a superb equilibrium. Frith's distorted guitar and Greaves's bass launch the track toward Krause's vocals, this time vaguely angelic. For about a minute and a half, we witness an interplay of inlaid textures between the sly drumming, the languid piano notes and the guitar's stiletto jabs. Immediately after, Hodgkinson's piano playing grows more melancholic, while Krause slowly pushes toward an interlude of horror-movie guitar distortions, anarchic bursts of "Faust-like" electronics, xylophone tunings and percussion, and pseudo-jazz triangulations of drums, guitar and synth; all this before, at 7'14", the "silent" notes of the organ and the restless flourishes of Frith's violin set up a solemn outburst of organ (reminiscent of Messiaen's "mysticism") and timpani. The tension builds until it explodes into pure "progressive" splendour: percussive syncopation, a schizophrenic guitar solo, roiling bass. At 11'21", Frith's violin lays out a new passage of anguished meditation. In the background, one can make out the faint wail of the organ, the restless pulse of the bass, while Cutler prepares the final surge with a light caress of the cymbals. From 12'20" to the end, voice and instruments give rise to a masterpiece of emotional accumulation, a musical crescendo that encapsulates, in embryonic form, the full artistic stature of this phenomenal band. Cutler's "Wyatt-like" drumming (as precise as it is elusive), Frith's violin pointed skyward, the "rhythmic-cumulative" counterpoints of Hodgkinson's piano, the metallic spirals of Blegvad's guitar: an incredible and powerful musical fresco, too difficult to describe, because there are things words simply cannot capture.

"Beginning: The Long March" (6'00"), on the other hand, is chaos translated into sonic symbols. After a violent harmonic crash of horns, electronic storms, lopsided guitar chords and percussive thuds, a noise-driven rupture plunges us into an "other" dimension, teeming with bass modulations, industrial hisses, isolationist oboe and bassoon solos and the radiation of a ghostly violin. It is the definitive representation of hell on earth and an incredible prefiguration of certain industrial music yet to come (Throbbing Gristle? Einsturzende Neubauten?). "Beautiful As The Moon – Terrible As An Army With Banners" (7'02") is another extraordinary example of a progressive "song". Krause's singing is more anguished and austere than ever, splendidly accompanied by the enchanting pictorialism of the cymbals. The bass/drums progressions find an almost "metaphysical" counterpart in the fatalistic piano chords (Frith). The central section digs deep into both of these trajectories. The piano playing grows progressively "jazzier", while the purely rhythmic aspect maintains its detached linearity. "Morning Star" (6'02") retraces the steps of the jazz-dadaist instrumental improvisation already explored in "Beginning". The only difference, aside from the "free" digressions of the horns, is the emphasis placed on the metallic-percussive sonorities of the timpani and xylophone, the latter electronically defaced. Moreover, compared to "Beginning", there's a greater sense of impenetrability here, despite the light that the title might lead one to expect.

A work of immeasurable artistic stature, "In Praise Of Learning" is, in the end, and despite its scant visibility, one of the absolute masterpieces of the 1970s (in any genre or field), and one of those records that proved it's possible to build a bridge even between the most disparate musical experiences. All of it, with a hammer held firmly in hand.

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29/10/2006