Western Culture

Henry Cow | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (June 13, 1995)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: East Side Digital
• ASIN: B000000PLY
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Vinyl
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #540,601 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. Industry

2. The Decay of Cities

3. On the Raft

4. Falling Away

5. Coretels Tale

6. Look Back

7. 1/2 the Sky

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars artistic marriage of rock, modernist classical, jazz..., February 12, 2004

By 

Lord Chimp (Monkey World) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Western Culture (Audio CD)

...the way only Henry Cow could do it.

After Henry Cow's _In Praise of Learning_, the situation in the band was getting a little divisive. Lindsay Cooper and Tom Hodgkinson wanted to compose longer instrumental pieces, while Chris Cutler and Fred Frith wanted to focus on more song-oriented music. Unfortunately, they couldn't come to an agreement so Frith, Cutler, and Dagmar Krause released their song-based material as the first Art Bears album, _Hopes and Fears_, while Hodgkinson and Cooper's work was released as the final Henry Cow album, _Western Culture_.

And let me tell you, it's fookin' brilliant. _Western Culture_ is pretty much entirely composed, with only sporadic glimpses of the band's previous affinities towards improvisation. Hodgkinson and Cooper each compose one side of the album (1 and 2, respectively -- BUT, they both wrote "1/2 the Sky"), and while they are distinctly different, it all ties together nicely because of the consistent harmonic quality and dense, tight arrangements. Best of all, this music, while very strange and complex, is also very moving and evocative, all the while deploying twisted, angular melodies, intense textural colors, dissonant harmonic language, and shifty motivic processes. This is also the most 'classical' sounding of their catalogue, probably because of the emphasis on wind instruments. Hodgkinson's pieces are gritty and atonal, complex and energetic. The organ outburst opening "Industry" takes off with Cutler's drumming unpredictably shifting accents. "The Decay of Cities" begins quite beautifully, with an unusually tuned acoustic guitar and melancholy trombone extending into catchy, danceable melodies, then strains of clattering noise split by a four-note arpeggio played on different instruments, then to scratching violin, and eventually resolving itself with the a rearrangement of the early motif. Cooper's pieces embrace Eastern European folk traditions with astute modernism, like Stravinsky, although some of the most revelatory moments bring out jazz idioms, like the percussive avant-jazz piano in "Gretel's Tale" or the chirping free saxophone over falling, dense, slowly-moving organ chords on "1/2 the Sky", which creates a very ominous sound. Cooper also provides "Look Back", a short, melancholy chamber piece for strings, woodwinds, and bass guitar, and in contrast to the album's prickly music, this is quite lyrical and beautiful (wish it was longer...). "Falling Away" is an aggressive rocker with an intricate folk melody and a churning rhythmic undercurrent. The music deconstructs in the middle, building towards its joyous apogee with its return to main melody at the end -- one of my favorite Henry Cow moments. Chris Cutler's drumming is at its finest here.

Definitely check this one out. This is Henry Cow's swansong, a tremendously rewarding album that still ranks as one of the most compositionally sophisticated 'rock' albums ever. This is one of those albums that I could listen to every day for the rest of my life and not get bored of it. It is intellectually satisfying, eminently listenable (in MY opinion, anyway; looks like some of the other reviewers disagree), and gives me a feeling like no other CD.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Makes me wanna run away to a rock camp commune., December 4, 2000

By 

evenmoregeneric (Louisville, KY United States) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Western Culture (Audio CD)

Henry Cow, of indescribable sonic manifestations and fairly obvoius leftist political leanings have recorded the soundtrack for the industrial revolution's theoretic suicide. This is the sound of what a handful a ridiculously talented hippies thought our future would come to. Too bad nobody is playing rock (and this is rock) anywhere near this precisely anymore.

This purely instrumental album is fairly prototypical henry cow (the non-vocals brand), yet, in my opinion, is the best written and performed of any of their recordings. It starts out with one of the most bombastic HC songs recorded (especially for the non-vocal era, they tend to rock it out a little more consistently on later/con vox recodings.), but for the most part, the tension in this album is communcated through compositional inference, rather than volume.

If you're like me, you find the sweet spot of this album comes in the second half, where the songs seems to take better advantage of the band as a whole, and feature some fairly awe inspiring interplay.

If you like your rock abstract, and played with fairly devious technical sensibilities this is it. If you want vocals, or something to seduce your partner to, you might wanna look elsewhere. Unless you wanna bump uglies in 13/8.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant progressive music, September 19, 1998

By 

David G. Spear (Japan) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Western Culture (Audio CD)

This has been my favorite album for many years. It combines acoustic instruments and electronics in a way that may seem dissonant and unstructured at first listen, but is actually very carefully crafted and meticulously performed. The recording is also excellent, with many subtle details in texture and spatial imaging that reward repeated listening at high volume.