765 - Henry Cow Box Set "2 : Early 2"

Early 2 opens with a series of well-recorded tracks from an unknown source, largely culled from Unrest but demonstrating Cow's penchant for mixing things up in performance so that, while all the signposts of Frith's "Ruins" are there, the complexion is changed by inserting "Half Asleep" smack dab in the middle. Frith doesn't reproduce the razor's edge tone of his solo on the studio version of "Ruins," but his immense, soundscape-like replacement provides an alternate approach that's perhaps even more powerful, before dissolving into a free improv section where the guitarist's innovative approach to prepared guitar techniques are on full display—concepts that he'd mine and evolve further over the years, in ways that would position him alongside Derek Bailey for sheer audacity and textural unpredictability.

Cow's ability to combine complex composition with improvisation of reckless abandon can be heard on the 30-minute excerpt from a 1974 Halsteren, Holland show. Presaging the more concise, 13-minute vocal version of Hodgkinson's "Living in the Heart of the Beast" that immediately follows on the disc (from a 1975 performance in Paris, France that also features Krause's first appearance), in Halsteren the group—at this point a quartet, with Cutler, Frith, Greaves and Hodgkinson—intersperses individual and collective soloing with composed segments from Hodgkinson's epic piece.

AAJ