Terrible as an Army with Banners

A bit ago, when I wrote about the Dead C's Clyma Est Mort, I was impressed with its obvious influence on so much outside/avant rock of recent years. This morning, I listened to a comparably beautiful record with little to no recognizable impact on anything being made today, Henry Cow's In Praise of Learning. It's a remarkable, unusual record that bears no relationship to anything remotely fashionable these days. It crosses boundaries of rock, classical, and (rarely) jazz traditions in most unexpected ways. There's a driving rock drum kit, lots of close mics, and obvious use of compression. Vocal songs sometimes rely on an emotional palette that obviously relates to rock. There are also classical instruments (bassoon, oboe, clarinet), through composition, and an epic/stately sweep that are usually associated with a classical idiom. Some of the strange textures live outside of any of these obvious referents. The boundary-crossing is strange and memorable, but it hardly explains the real majesty and beauty of this record. It does help explain how offputting it feels by any notion of music in 2007--there isn't a logical micro-genre in which it can reside anywhere in today's litany of subcategorization. 1975 was a long time ago indeed.

I did see the Fred Frith/Chris Cutler/Tim Hodgkinson show at the Stone in Manhattan in December and it was special (it didn't sound much like In Praise of Learning either). The show clearly manifested how each of their playing styles owes a debt to their years of collaboration and interplay.