The Squid's Ear Magazine

Henry Cow

Vol. 7: Later and Post-Virgin

Henry Cow: Vol. 7: Later and Post-Virgin (Recommended Records)

Part of the Henry Cow boxset, now available for individual purchase, compiled from live recordings, radio transcription, or early recordings, remastered and presented to give a complete look at the history of Henry Cow.
 

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Personnel:



Tim Hodgkinson-organ, alto saxophone, clarinet, voice, tapes

Fred Frith-guitar, xylophone, tubular bells, violin, piano

Lindsay Cooper-bassoon, oboe, jaw harp, flute, piano, accordion

Georgie Born-brass, cello

Dagmar Krause-voice

Chris Cutler-drums, contact microphone amplification

Geoff Leigh-tenor saxophone

Anne-Marie Roelofs-trombone


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UPC: 752725025829

Label: Recommended Records
Catalog ID: RERHC13
Squidco Product Code: 23556

Format: CD
Condition: New
Released: 2016
Country: UK
Packaging: Jewel Case

Descriptions, Reviews, &c.

"A collection of live performances from late 1976 and 1977.

"Joan" and "On Suicide", traditionally associated with Art Bears and Hopes and Fears (1978), feature here and show that they were Henry Cow songs long before Art Bears came into being. "On Suicide" is longer than the Art Bears version and ends with a cello solo by Georgie Born. The Art Bears version of "Joan" also differs from the live recording here in that it is shorter (several sections are "telescoped" into one), and the lyrics are not the same. Chris Cutler wrote the original lyrics for "Joan" and Tim Hodgkinson's "The Pirate Song", but the group were unhappy with them, and the songs were withdrawn from Henry Cow's repertoire. "Joan" was only performed a few times, and "The Pirate Song" not at all. Prior to Henry Cow's recording session at Sunrise in Switzerland in January 1978, Cutler rewrote the lyrics of the two songs, but once again there were objections from factions within the group. Dagmar Krause, however, supported the new lyrics and both songs were recorded by Henry Cow with the revised texts, only to be released later by Art Bears on Hopes and Fears as a result of further disagreements with the group.

"Untitled Piece" was a work-in-progress by Lindsay Cooper that was only performed a few times by Henry Cow, and foreshadowed some of her work that appeared later on her 1998 solo album A View From the Bridge. "Chaumont 1", "Chaumont 2" and "March" are from a Paris concert featuring an improvisation by the group, a bassoon and saxophone duet by Cooper and Hodgkinson, and Fred Frith's familiar "March" to close the set. Also included are new renditions of "Teenbeat" and "Bittern Storm Over Ulm". According to All About Jazz, "Teenbeat 2" features "some of Frith's most searing guitar playing of the box", and "Teenbeat 3" has "Hodgkinson's saxophone at its most visceral."

"Post-Teen Auditorium Invasion" and "Bucket Waltz" are from a concert in Amsterdam that feature guests Annemarie Roelofs and ex-Henry Cow member Geoff Leigh. Roelofs, who was attending the concert, began playing trombone from the audience and was invited to join Henry Cow on stage. She ended up touring with the band the following year and playing on Western Culture. Leigh, whose band Red Balune was playing at the same concert, was invited by his former band to guest with them."-Wikipedia



"Assembled over 15 years, this collection gives for the first time some idea of the breadth and depth of Henry Cow's work. Always very much a live band, performance was their metier, and a concert might range far - always driven by an intense dialogue between tightly knit compositions and radically open improvisation. The officially released LPs tell at best only half this story, and one purpose of this definitive collection is to set the work back into its broader context.

These are all previously unreleased recordings, that include many compositions and improvisations new to anyone who only knows the official releases, documentation of a number of one-off projects and events and - where different or remarkable enough to justify inclusion - live versions of parts of the LP repertoire. Many of these recordings are high quality radio transcriptions taken directly from the original masters, others are less hi-fi, but justified we think by their historic and musical quality. And everything has been carefully transferred and re-mastered by Bob Drake to the best audio quality that current technology allows without interference or tampering. It's all a million times better than the terrible bootlegs that are swimming around.

Altogether, the 9 CDs embody some extraordinary, and occasionally prescient music. Taking this box together with the officially released albums, it is possible at last to get some impression of the extensive ground Henry Cow covered in it's 10 short years. Finally, there is the DVD: 80 minutes of the 1976 Cow (with Georgina Born and Dagmar Krause) performing many unreleased pieces as well as Living in the Heart of The Beast, Beautiful as the Moon &c. This is the only known video recording in existence - professionally made, multi camera - and has not been recovered since its original broadcast (just scour U-Tube, HC is conspicuous by its total absence). And last but not least, there is a great deal of written, photographic and textual documentation."-ReR Megacorp


Artist Biographies

"Tim Hodgkinson (b. 1949) studied social anthropology at Cambridge, and co-founded the politically and musically radical group HENRY COW with Fred Frith in 1968. In addition to composing, he has a long involvement in improvisation, and came back to anthropology in the 1990's with research into music and shamanism in Siberia.

He has participated in many concerts with Iancu Dumitrescu's Hyperion Ensemble both as bass clarinetist and composer and conductor. His compositions have been interpreted in such international festivals as: Spectrum XXI (Brussels, Paris, Geneva, , Berlin, London), Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (U.K.) where he was a featured composer in 2007, Craiova and Ploiesti Festivals (Romania), Guarda Festival (Portugal), Cantiere Internazionale d'Arte di Montepulciano (Italy), Konfrontationen Festival (Austria), Nordlyd Festival (Norway), Musique Action (France) and the European Symposium of Experimental Music at Barcelona.

His Piece for Harp and Cello was selected for the SPNM shortlist in 2005. His composition SHHH was accepted for the IMEB electroacoustic music archive at Bourges in 2006. His piece Fragor appeared in the Martin Scorsese film Shutter Island in 2010. He has worked with Hyperion Ensemble, Talea Ensemble, Ne(X)tworks, the Bergersen String Quartet, London Sinfonietta, Insomnio Ensemble, Phoenix Ensemble, Basler Schlagzeug Trio, Nidaros Slagverkensemble, Bindou Ensemble.

As an improvising musician on reeds and lap steel guitar Tim Hodgkinson has performed all over the world with many of the most acclaimed artists in the field, and continues to be fully engaged in the celebrated Konk Pack trio with Roger Turner and Thomas Lehn. In 2009 he released KLARNT - a CD of solo clarinet improvisations.

With Ken Hyder, and Gendos Chamzyryn from Tuva, he works in the K-Space project: numerous tours of Europe and Siberia and CD releases - including INFINITY, a set of recordings that uses customised software to re-compose the music with each listening. In 2009, K-Space developed a sound-installation for the exhibition Shamans of Siberia at the Museum of Ethnology in Stuttgart.

As a writer, he has published articles and reviews on improvised music, musique concrète, spectralism, the ethnomusicology of shamanism, and the aesthetic problems of the impact of new technology on contemporary music - in, amongst others, Perspectives of New Music, Arcana, Contemporary Music Review, Musicworks, The Wire, Cambridge Anthropology, Variant, Rer Quarterly, and Resonance Magazine. His book, MUSIC AND THE MYTH OF WHOLENESS will be published by MIT in January 2016.

He has given lectures, workshops and seminars at Cagliari and Lyon Conservatoires, at the Institute of Contemporary Art, at Goldsmiths College and the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, at Istanbul, Edinburgh and Cornell Universities, and art schools in several European countries, at COMA summer school, and at the Verband für Aktuelle Musik in Hamburg where he was artist in residence in 2010."

-Tim Hodgkinson Website (http://www.timhodgkinson.co.uk/information.html)
3/13/2024

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"Though the point of reference for many remains the iconic band Henry Cow, which he co-founded in 1968 and which broke up more than 30 years ago, Fred Frith has never really stood still for an instant.

In bands such as Art Bears, Massacre, Skeleton Crew, Keep the Dog, Tense Serenity, the Fred Frith Guitar Quartet, Eye to Ear, and most recently Cosa Brava, he has always held true to his roots in rock and folk music, while exploring influences that range from the literary works of Eduardo Galeano to the art installations of Cornelia Parker.

The release of the seminal Guitar Solos in 1974 enabled him to simultaneously carve out a place for himself in the international improvised music scene, not only as an acclaimed solo performer but in the company of artists as diverse as Han Bennink, Chris Cutler, Jean-Pierre Drouet, Evelyn Glennie, Ikue Mori, Louis Sclavis, Stevie Wishart, Wu Fei, Camel Zekri, John Zorn, and scores of others.

He has also developed a personal compositional language in works written for Arditti Quartet, Asko Ensemble, Bang on a Can All-Stars, Ensemble Modern, Concerto Köln, and ROVA Sax Quartet, for example. Fred has been active as a composer for dance since the early 1980s, working with choreographers Bebe Miller, François Verret, and especially long-time collaborator and friend Amanda Miller, with whom he has created a compelling body of work over the last twenty years.

His film soundtracks (for award-winning films like Thomas Riedelsheimer's Rivers and Tides and Touch the Sound, Peter Mettler's Gambling, Gods, and LSD, and Deborah Kaufman and Alan Snitow's Thirst, to name a few) won him a lifetime achievement award from Prague's "Music on Film, Film on Music" Festival (MOFFOM) in 2007. The following year he received Italy's Demetrio Stratos Prize (previously given to Diamanda Galas and Meredith Monk) for his life's work in experimental music, and in 2010 was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Huddersfield in his home county of Yorkshire.

Fred currently teaches in the Music Department at Mills College in Oakland, California (renowned for over fifty years as the epicenter of the American experimental tradition), and in the Musik Akademie in Basel, Switzerland."

-Fred Frith Website (http://www.fredfrith.com/biography.html)
3/13/2024

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"Lindsay Cooper (3 March 1951 Ð 18 September 2013) was an English bassoon and oboe player, composer and political activist. Best known for her work with the band Henry Cow, she was also a member of Comus, National Health, News from Babel and David Thomas and the Pedestrians. She collaborated with a number of musicians, including Chris Cutler and Sally Potter, and co-founded the Feminist Improvising Group. She wrote scores for film and TV and a song cycle Oh Moscow which was performed live around the world in 1987. She also recorded a number of solo albums, including Rags (1980), The Gold Diggers (1983) and Music For Other Occasions (1986).

Cooper was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in the late 1970s, but did not disclose it to the musical community until the late 1990s when her illness prevented her from performing live. In September 2013, Cooper died from the illness at the age of 62, 15 years after her retirement."

-Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindsay_Cooper)
3/13/2024

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"Georgina Emma Mary Born, OBE, FBA (born 15 November 1955) is a British academic, anthropologist and musician. As a musician she is known as Georgie Born and is known for her work in Henry Cow and with Lindsay Cooper.

Born was born on 15 November 1955 in Wheatley, Oxfordshire, England. She is the granddaughter of the physicist and Nobel laureate Max Born, daughter of the pharmacologist Gustav Born and Ann Plowden-Wardlaw, stepdaughter of the American theatre director and writer George Mully, and cousin of the pop singer Olivia Newton-John. She is the partner of social theorist and political geographer Andrew Barry.

Born studied the cello and piano at the Royal College of Music in London, and performed classical and modern music including stints with the Michael Nyman Band, the Penguin Cafe Orchestra and the Flying Lizards. She also studied for a year at the Chelsea School of Art.

In June 1976, she joined the English avant-rock group Henry Cow as bass guitarist and cellist, following the departure of John Greaves. Henry Cow was in a period of intensive touring and Born toured Europe with the group for two years.

After Henry Cow, Born performed and recorded with a number of groups and musicians, including fellow Henry Cow member Lindsay Cooper, National Health, Bruford, and Mike Westbrook, particularly as a cellist in the Westbrook Orchestra. Her playing is prominent on Westbrook's album, The Cortege. Late in 1977, Born, Cooper, Sally Potter and Maggie Nichols founded the Feminist Improvising Group. She also recorded with The Raincoats, and played improvised music with Lol Coxhill, Steve Beresford, David Toop and others as a member of the London Musicians' Collective.

During the 1980s, Born was an occasional member of Derek Bailey's Company, and played cello and bass guitar on numerous soundtracks for television and film for composers Lindsay Cooper and Mike Westbrook, as well as the soundtrack for the Stephen Poliakoff play Caught on a Train (1980). She had a walk-on part in Sally Potter's film The Gold Diggers (1983).

Born studied anthropology at University College London, gaining her BSc in 1982 and her PhD (supervised by Michael Gilsenan and Michael Rowlands) in 1989. Her first academic job (1986-89) was in the Department of Human Sciences at Brunel University, where she assisted Roger Silverstone in setting up the degree in Communication and Information Studies. Born moved to a lectureship in the Department of Media and Communications at Goldsmiths' College, London (1989-97), where she worked alongside Dick Hebdige.

In 1997 Born began work for an Assistant Lectureship in the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Cambridge. In 2000 she was appointed to a Lectureship, in 2003 to Reader in Sociology, Anthropology and Music, and in 2006 to Professor of Sociology, Anthropology and Music at Cambridge, a title that recognises her interdisciplinary contributions.

At Cambridge, Born teaches the sociology and anthropology of culture, media, music, and ethnographic method in the Department of Sociology. She is responsible for the only dedicated lecture course on contemporary media in the social sciences.

Born is a member of Cambridge's Screen Media Group, which in 2006 launched Cambridge's first cross-Schools master's degree, Screen Media and Cultures. Born founded and directs the Cambridge Media Research Group which runs a seminar series and related events. In 2005 she organised a conference at Cambridge on the legacy of Laura Mulvey's essay, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema".

Between 1996 and 1998, Born was a visiting professor in the Institute of Musicology at the University of Aarhus, and from 1997 to 1998 Senior Research Fellow at King's College, Cambridge. From 1998 to 2006 she was Fellow and Director of Studies in Social and Political Sciences at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. Born is Honorary Professor of Anthropology at University College London and a Fellow of the Center for Cultural Sociology at Yale University. She is also a Fellow of the Australian Cultural Sociology Association and of the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism.

n 2010 Born was awarded an Advanced Grant by the European Research Council for a major programme of research on the transformation of music by digital media. Subsequently, she moved to become Professor of Music and Anthropology at the University of Oxford. Since 2012, she has also been a Fellow of Mansfield College, Oxford. In 2014 she was elected a Fellow of the British Academy."

-Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgina_Born)
3/13/2024

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"Dagmar Krause (born 4 June 1950) is a German singer, best known for her work with avant-rock groups including Slapp Happy, Henry Cow, and Art Bears. She is also noted for her coverage of songs by Bertolt Brecht, Kurt Weill and Hanns Eisler. Her unusual singing style makes her voice instantly recognisable and has defined the sound of many of the bands with whom she has worked.

Dagmar Krause was born in Hamburg, Germany on 4 June 1950. She began her professional career at the age of 14 as a singer in Hamburg clubs on the Reeperbahn. In 1968 she was invited to join the City Preachers (de), a contemporary folk/protest she once half-jokingly described as a German version of The Mamas & the Papas. She contributed vocals to their 1968 album Der Kürbis, das Transportproblem und die Traumtänzer (The Pumpkin, the Problem of Transport and the Dream-dancers), a spin-off from a German TV show. The City Preachers broke up in 1969, but their lead singer Inga Rumpf and Krause reunited in 1970 to record I.D. Company, the name of a studio project where each vocalist sung lead on and determined the direction of one side of the LP (Krause's side indicated her future direction with its avant-garde slant).

Hamburg had a thriving avant-garde scene that attracted numerous European musicians interested in pursuing aesthetic freedom and experimental music. It was here that Krause met, and later married, British experimental composer Anthony Moore. In 1972, Moore, Krause and Moore's visiting American friend, singer-songwriter Peter Blegvad formed Slapp Happy, a self-described "naive rock" group which mixed simple pop structures with obfuscatory lyrics drawing equally from semiotic and symbolist traditions. Slapp Happy was the beginning of Krause's international musical career. They recorded two albums in Germany for Polydor with Faust as their backing band, Sort Of (1972) and what subsequently became known as Acnalbasac Noom (not released at the time). Then they moved to London where they recorded a new arrangement of Acnalbasac Noom for Virgin Records, released as Slapp Happy, also known as Casablanca Moon (1974). The original Acnalbasac Noom only saw the light of day in 1980 when it was released by Recommended Records.

In 1974, Slapp Happy merged with Virgin label-mates Henry Cow, a politically oriented avant-rock group, and they made two albums, Desperate Straights (1974) and In Praise of Learning (1975). But differences in approach caused Anthony Moore and Peter Blegvad to withdraw Slapp Happy from the merger. Krause, however, elected to remain with Henry Cow and that spelt the end of Slapp Happy.

Krause's singing added a new dimension to Henry Cow's repertoire and their tricky time signatures enhanced her vocal powers. Henry Cow toured Europe for two years, during which time they released a live album Concerts (1976) which included Krause singing duos with Robert Wyatt. But in May 1976 she was forced to withdraw from Henry Cow's hectic tour schedule due to ill health and returned to Hamburg. In October 1977, still unable to tour she left Henry Cow, but agreed to sing on their next studio album Hopes and Fears.

Hopes and Fears began in 1978 as a Henry Cow album but differences of opinion in the group about its content resulted in it being credited to Art Bears, a new band consisting of Krause, Chris Cutler and Fred Frith. Art Bears went on to make two more albums of songs, Winter Songs (1979) and The World as It Is Today (1981).

In 1979, she collaborated with Kevin Coyne on the album Babble, released on the Virgin Records label. The work courted controversy when Coyne suggested, in the theatre presentation of the piece, that the destructive relationship between the two lovers could have been based on The Moors Murderers. Two performances at the Theatre Royal Stratford East in London were cancelled at short notice by Newham Council following negative press reports in The Sun and The Evening Standard. The show was eventually staged, for four nights, at Oval House in Kennington. Reviewing the show for the NME, Paul Du Noyer wrote:" Babble is a particularly thorough, painstaking exploration of the reality of one relationship, stripped of romance and artifice. The format employed is correspondingly stark. Against a stage-set of light-bulb, table and chairs Coyne and his partner Dagmar Krause stand at either side; the only accompaniment comes from Bob Ward and Brian Godding, playing electric and acoustic guitar in the gloom behind. "

In 1983, Krause joined a new band News from Babel, featuring core members Krause, Chris Cutler, Lindsay Cooper and Zeena Parkins. They recorded two albums Work Resumed on the Tower (1984) and Letters Home (1985). After News from Babel, Krause was involved in a number of projects and collaborations. She performed on the Michael Nyman/Paul Richards art song, "The Kiss" with Omar Ebrahim on the Michael Nyman Band album The Kiss and Other Movements (1985). She also featured on Music for Other Occasions (1986) with Lindsay Cooper, Domestic Stories (1992) with Chris Cutler and Lutz Glandien, Each in Our Own Thoughts (1994) with Tim Hodgkinson, and A Scientific Dream and a French Kiss (1998) with Marie Goyette.

In 1984, Dagmar sang backing vocals on "Here & There" by The Stranglers. The song appeared on the b-side of their single, "Skin Deep". It was subsequently added to the 2001 remastered edition of the parent album, Aural Sculpture.

In 1991, Dagmar Krause, Anthony Moore and Peter Blegvad reunited to work on a "Camera" (Italian for "Room") a specially written television opera, made by the UK production company After Image and commissioned by Channel 4 Television. It was based on an original idea by Krause, with words by Peter Blegvad and music by Anthony Moore. Krause played the lead character "Melusina" and the opera was broadcast two years later on Channel 4. Slapp Happy reformed briefly in 1997 to record Ça Va and they toured Japan in 2000.

In 2010, Krause joined Comicoperando, a tribute to the music of Robert Wyatt whose line-up has included Richard Sinclair, Annie Whitehead, Gilad Atzmon, Alex Maguire, Chris Cutler, John Edwards, Michel Delville, Karen Mantler and Cristiano Calcagnile.Solo work

Dagmar Krause's fascination with Weimar-era cabaret and her love for the work of playwright Bertolt Brecht and his musical collaborators Kurt Weill and Hanns Eisler produced some of her most satisfying work. In 1978 she starred in a London art-theatre production of the Brecht and Weill play Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, and in 1985 she sang Brecht and Weill's "Surabaya Johnny" on the Hal Willner-produced Lost in the Stars: The Music of Kurt Weill. John Dougan wrote at AllMusic that Krause's "elegant alto was perfectly suited to the emotionally and politically charged music of Brecht and Weill".

In 1986, Krause made two solo albums: Supply and Demand: Songs by Brecht/Weill and Eisler and Tank Battles: The Songs of Hanns Eisler. These albums were also sung in German and released as Angebot und Nachfrage and Panzerschlacht: Die Lieder von Hanns Eisler. Lyrically they continued the trend of earlier songs of social conscience Krause had performed, for example on Henry Cow's "Living in the Heart of the Beast". Supply and Demand and Tank Battles are seen by many as Krause's best work, while the latter is considered to be one of the finest interpretations of Eisler's work. She performed selections from these albums live at various venues, most notably the Edinburgh Festival, which was documented on Voiceprint Radio Sessions (1993).Singing style

As a vocalist, Dagmar Krause is considered an acquired taste. Her singing style is highly original and idiosyncratic. Her "husky, vibrato-laden alto" voice can range from a sweet melodious croon to the love-it-or-hate-it Armageddon style typified on albums like Henry Cow's In Praise of Learning. Part of the intrigue of Krause's singing are her German-inflected vocals, "... but whether she sings in German or English (which she often does on the same record), she retains her impeccable phrasing and ability to inject the most oft-heard lyric with almost palpable emotion."

In a review of The 40th Anniversary Henry Cow Box Set (2009), critic John Kelman at All About Jazz, wrote that "the kinds of intervallic leaps and harmonic sophistication required of a singer [in Henry Cow] make Krause an undervalued and underrated singer in this history of modern music." "

-Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dagmar_Krause)
3/13/2024

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"Chris Cutler started messing about with banjo, guitar and trumpet at school, settling for drums and playing shadows and other instrumental covers in his first band in 1963. Subsequently he played in R'n'B and Soul Bands, winding up in 1967 playing in London's psychedelic clubs. At the start of the seventies, with Dave Stewart, he co-founded The Ottawa Music Co, a 22 piece Rock composer's orchestra, eventually joining British experimental group Henry Cow with whom he toured, recorded and worked in dance and theatre projects until it's demise in 1978. In 1977 Henry Cow, The Mike Westbrook Orchestra and Frankie Armstrong formed a big-band and toured around Europe. After Henry Cow, Cutler went on to co-found a series of mixed national groups Art Bears, News from Babel, Cassiber, The (ec) Nudes, P53 and The Science Group. He was a permanent member of American bands Pere Ubu, Hail and The Wooden Birds and now works sporadically with John Rose, Fred Frith, Zeena Parkins, Iancu Dumitrescu, Peter Blegvad and Stevan Tickmayer.

Other lasting collaborations have included Aqsak Maboul (Belgium), Lussier/Derome and Les Quatre Guitaristes (Canada), The Kalahari Surfers (Africa), Perfect Trouble (Germany), Between (Sweden), N.O.R.M.A., (Italy), Telectu (Portugal), Mieku Shimuzu (Japan),The Hyperion Ensemble (Romania), The Film Music Orchestra, 'Oh Moscow', Gong, The Work and Towering Inferno (UK), The Residents (USA), and stateless Tense Serenity and Mirror Man. There have also been countless improvisational groupings and solo performances. Recent projects include Radio pieces with Lutz Glandien and Shelly Hirsch, Live Soundtrack for Carl Dreher's Vampyr (with Italians Musci and Venosta), his Timescales project and work with David Thomas and Linda Thompson.

He also founded and runs the independent label and distribution service ReR/Recommended and, until 1991, the East European specialist label Points East. He is editor of the New Music magazine Unfiled and author of the theoretical book File Under Popular as well as of numerous articles and papers published in 14 languages. He lectures intermittently on theoretical and music related topics. He has appeared on more than 100 recordings."

-Chris Cutler Website (http://www.ccutler.com/)
3/13/2024

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"Geoff Leigh (born 5 October 1945) is an English jazz and progressive rock musician, playing primarily soprano saxphone and flute. He was a member of the English avant-rock group Henry Cow and founded several bands himself, including Red Balune, Random Bob, Black Sheep, Mirage, and Ex-Wise Heads.

Geoff Leigh's first gigs were with soul music bands in Manchester in 1965, (the beginnings of the now infamous Northern Soul Scene), in clubs like the Twisted Wheel. His professional career began in 1968, touring the United Kingdom and Europe with various jazz-rock-progressive rock groups, mainly Crazy Mabel. In 1969 he joined Gerry Fitzgerald's band Mouseproof, which introduced Leigh to the budding Canterbury scene and musicians like Daevid Allen, Kevin Ayers and Robert Wyatt.

In the early 1970s Leigh performed with Henry Cow on several occasions, having known the band's drummer, Chris Cutler, from school. Leigh accepted Henry Cow's invitation to join the band in 1972, and he played on their first album Legend (1973). After a tour of the Netherlands at the end of 1973, and his preference for playing composed as opposed to improvised music, Leigh left Henry Cow. (Leigh himself insists it was the other way round - he found the composed music becoming more complex for the sake of it, and the improvisations too contemporary classical for his essentially free jazz approach).[citation needed] The band's timeline of its history in the 1991 CD of Legend stated that Leigh left because he was "apparently unhappy with [the] increasingly total & scheduled group life."

As Henry Cow were, at the time, signed to Virgin Records, Leigh took advantage of Virgin's network of artists and performed and recorded with a number of their musicians and groups, including Slapp Happy and Hatfield and the North. In November 1973, Leigh participated in a live-in-the-studio performance of Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells for the BBC, with Mick Taylor, Steve Hillage and members of Henry Cow, Gong and Soft Machine. It was released on Oldfield's Elements DVD. He also guested on Henry Cow's album In Praise of Learning (1975).

In 1974, Leigh formed Radar Favourites, with Gerry Fitzgerald (vocals, guitar), Cathy Williams (keyboards, vocals), Jack Monck (bass guitar) and Charles Hayward (drums). After only a few months, musical differences led to Monck and Fitgerald leaving, to be replaced by Charles Bullen (guitar), and Alan Möller (bass). The group disbanded the following year after Virgin Records turned them down (for purely financial reasons[citation needed]) - Hayward and Bullen went on to form This Heat, one of the most seminal and influential groups of the time.[citation needed] Leigh and Williams then embarked on a long musical relationship - their first project was a duo, Rag Doll, followed by Red Balune, a music theatre collective they formed in 1976. Red Balune grew over the next few years and attracted a number of musicians, including Colin McClure (bass), Robin Musgrove (drums), Henk Weltevreden (keyboards), Aloijsius van Saus (industrial sounds and performance), and Anne-Marie Roeloffs (trombone).

In December 1977, Red Balune toured the Netherlands and returned to England in January 1978 to begin recording an album. The album was never finished, but they did release a single, "Spider in Love" c/w "Capitalist Kid", in 1978, on their own MCCB record label, which became a "seminal underground classic". In April 1978 the band relocated to the Netherlands, recording the EP Maximum Penalty in early 1979, which featured guest appearances by ex-Henry Cow members Fred Frith (guitar, violin), Tim Hodgkinson (keyboards, alto saxophone, clarinet), Chris Cutler (piano scrapes and general burning ideas), and Aksak Maboul founder Marc Hollander (bass clarinet).

By then Leigh was spending more time in Brussels, playing with experimental bands Aksak Maboul and Univers Zéro, and after the release of his solo EP Chemical Bank in 1979, played solo performances for almost eighteen months, mainly in Belgium and France. In 1981 Leigh moved back to Rotterdam and formed the Kontakt Mikrofoon Orkest, featuring Colin McClure, Aloijsius van Saus (vocals, guitar, alto sax, keyboards, electronics), Gert van Seters (drums), and Jos Valster (saxophones and clarinets). This short-lived group recorded one single on the MCCB label, "Living in Rotterdam"/"Do the Residue", before splitting in late 1981. But the seeds of Black Sheep were sown with Colin McLure and Aloijsius van Saus. In 1981 they released a 12-inch maxi single, "Animal Sounds", and contributed "Strangelove" (on which Zeena Parkins made her recording debut, as backing vocalist) to a Recommended Records compilation disc. They toured extensively in the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Switzerland, Sweden, and Yugoslavia.

After leaving the Black Sheep in 1982, Leigh formed several bands which owed more to world music than any of his previous work, the most long-standing being Random Bob, featuring Colin McClure, Henk Weltevreden, and percussionist Asad Oberoi, later replaced by drummer/percussionist Coen Aalberts.

In 1986, Leigh headed back to Brussels, where he became even more closely involved in the world music scene, performing with Algerian singer Hamsy Boubaker, and Moroccan oud players Hassan Erragi and Abid. With Abid he co-composed and performed the music for a one-woman theatre production with Tunisian-Belgian actress Sabra Ben Arfa, produced by Moroccan actor-producer Amid Chakir, a close associate of Belgian film maker Chantal Akerman. The play was performed many times in Belgium, Tunisia, and Egypt. Around this time Leigh also had a long-term musical partnership with Moroccan guimbri player, vocalist, and percussionist Jalil El Afra.

Leigh continued working with Rotterdam-based percussionist Asad Oberoi, composing and performing music for several dance productions. Via his contacts in Brussels he worked with film maker Alain de Halleux on many TV and movie ads, including a trilogy of ads for Perrier. Several short-lived duos and one-off projects from this period included musicians John van Rymenant (saxophones, electronics, programming), Peter Beyls (self-designed software, controllers, interfaces, electronics), Claude Janssens (alto saxophone, trombone, programming). Leigh played with Pierre Jacob (keyboards, flutes, percussion, vocals) in the fusion group Sables from 1988 until 1992, and in 1988 formed the Morton Fork Gang with British saxophonist Joe Higham - the band included Daniel Denis (drums) and Guy Segers (bass guitar) from Univers Zéro, cellist Jan Kuijken, and saxophonists Mark Bogaerts and Daniel Stokart.

In 1992 Leigh was diagnosed with dystonia, an incurable neurological condition, contracted after a badly performed dental operation some two years earlier, which affected his performing capabilities to such an extent that he eventually stopped playing altogether. He managed to fulfil some concert obligations with Morton Fork and Sables in Brussels in early 1993, and after returning permanently to the UK, rehearsed and performed in small venues with original Radar Favourites bassist Jack Monck and Moroccan percussionist Lahcen Lahbib, as the Highly Irregulars.

But the medication Leigh was prescribed (Trihexyphenidyl hydrochloride, formerly known as Artane) did actually work - only about 1 in 10 sufferers can tolerate this medicine, and the chances of it having a long term positive effect are very slight. Throughout the 1990s he slowly regained sufficient control of the condition to resume work.[citation needed]

In 1999 he formed the ethno-fusion band Ex-Wise Heads with bass-guimbri player Colin Edwin from progressive rock band Porcupine Tree. A chance meeting in 2002 with Berliner Tom Zunk (waterphone and Indonesian percussion) led to the formation of the duo Men Working Overhead, which performed several concerts in Germany and London between 2002 and 2004, often augmented by dancer-video artist Elke Postler.

Since the re-release in 2005 of the entire MCCB back catalogue on Ad Hoc Records, a subsidiary of Recommended Records, the Black Sheep recorded the album Out of Quarantine, featuring both previously unreleased material from 1981-82 and recordings from 2005. As a result of renewed interest in the MCCB release, Leigh and Cathy Williams formed the band Mirage. They released their second album, Child's Play, in 2007, augmenting the group with Sam Christie (percussion), and Gem McSweeney (mandolin and various strings, flutes, and percussion).

In July 2005 Leigh played a one-off concert in London with Faust founder members Jean-Hervé Péron and Werner "Zappi" Diermaier, then played with Lucianne Lassalle (voice, electronics) as Henrico Reed & Lulu at the Faust Avant Garde Festival near Hamburg in September 2005. The duo performed again on the 2006 festival, and also contributed to the Faust UK tour in October/November 2005. A box set, Faust....in Autumn was released on Dirter Records in December 2006, featuring the band and both Leigh and Lassalle. Leigh performed solo at the 2008 Faust festival.

In 2009, Leigh was involved in several projects, including solo performances, a duo with Simon Crab (laptop processing, ex-Bourbonese Qualk), and several on-line collaborations. He also has several archive releases in the pipeline, including a Radar Favourites album release, and possibly an album from the Morton Fork Gang. An album with Japanese pianist-vocalist-composer Yumi Hara Cawkwell is planned for release in June.[when?] He has become something of a regular at Hastings Electric Palace Cinema, recently voted one of The Guardian's Top Ten UK arthouse cinemas, contributing live improvised soundscapes to short experimental movies.

Other activities in 2009[when?] included a solo performance at the Kraak Festival in Brussels in March, five concerts and two workshops in Japan with Yumi Hara, plus a guest appearance with Japanese psychedelic rock band Acid Mothers Temple. Leigh and Yumi Hara were joined by Japanese drummer Tatsuya Yoshida for a concert in Tokyo. Saxophonist Ryoko Ono also guested on one concert. In August, Leigh performed at the annual Avant Garde Festival in Schiphorst, Germany, with Yumi Hara and ex-Henry Cow members Chris Cutler (drums) and John Greaves (bass and vocals), which led to them forming The Artaud Beats. He was also invited to perform with Nurse With Wound. In late October 2009, Leigh played solo at the Nodutgang Festival in Bodo, Norway, and several concerts in Sweden with Magnus Alexanderson (guitar and electronics).

In 2010, after playing a short tour of Italy in February with guitarist Adriano Lanzi, Leigh decided to take a break from live performances due to ongoing dental problems, which have obliged him to temporarily stop playing saxophone. However the year saw a handful of local performances, including two appearances at Brighton's Spirit of Gravity, one with the Warrior Squares, the second with cellist Bela Emerson. Three new albums were released: Radar Favourites, Ex Wise Heads, and Uwe Bastiansen's Stadtfischflex, featuring Leigh alongside Jean-Herve Peron and Zappi Diermaier (Faust), and Tim Hodgkinson (Henry Cow)."

-Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoff_Leigh)
3/13/2024

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.

"Annemarie Roelofs (born 1955), also spelt Anne-Marie Roelofs and Anne Marie Roelofs, is a Dutch trombone player and violinist, and is a professor at the Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts. She was a member of several musical groups, including Henry Cow and the Feminist Improvising Group, and has performed in the Netherlands and England.

Roelofs studied trombone and violin at the conservatorium in Amsterdam. In December 1977 she began playing with English avant-rock group Henry Cow and appeared on their last album Western Culture (1979). She also performed with Guus Janssen and Maggie Nicols, and began working in German theatre in 1979. Roelofs is a member of the cabaret-duo "Niemann and Roelofs" with Cornelia Niemann, the duo Plenar/Roelofs with pianist Elvira Plenar, and the "Triple A" trombone trio with Annie Whitehead and Abbie Conant. She also has a band of her own, "The Waste Watchers" with Johannes Krämer and Dirk Marwedel, which released Music From the Land of Milk & Honey in 1997.

Roelofs has worked in the Feminist Improvising Group and the United Women's Orchestra. She has also worked in projects with Lindsay Cooper, Heiner Goebbels, Alfred Harth."

-Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annemarie_Roelofs)
3/13/2024

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.


Track Listing:



1. Joan 5:26

2. Teenbeat 2 8:05

3. Would You Prefer Us To Lie? 4:28

4. Untitled Piece 11:31

5. Chaumont 1 9:01

6. Chaumont 2 2:14

7. March 7:00

8. Brain Storm Over Barnsley 3:23

9. Teenbeat 3 6:45

10. Post-Teen Auditorium Invasion 3:56

11. Bucket Waltz 4:26

12. On Suicide 3:42

Related Categories of Interest:


Rock and Related
Improvised Music
Improvised Rock
RIO (Rock in Opposition)
Sextet Recordings
Frith, Fred
Cutler, Chris
New in Rock Forms

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Starting with Blegvad's "Downtime" LP, this box traces the evolution of the Peter Blegvad Trio into a quintet with Karen Mantler and Bob Drake, released in a solid box with a double CD of alternate versions, unreleased material and live performances, plus a 72 page book of photographs, memorabilia, drawings, documents and recollections; the ultimate reissue!
Henry Cow
Box 2: The Road: Volumes 6-10 with DVD
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