767 - Henry Cow Box Set "4 & 5 : Trondheim"

The final two discs of the first box (Trondheim 1 and Trondheim 2) document a complete concert recorded in Trondheim, Norway on May 26, 1976. With Greaves' departure and Krause ill in Hamburg, the group had committed to a nine-city Norwegian tour. And so, rather than looking for replacements the group continued on as a four-piece—Cutler, Frith, Hodgkinson and Cooper—putting on a series of entirely improvised concerts performed largely in the dark (lit only, if at all, by candlelight). The quartet had already been experimenting with taped sounds, and here it augments the landscape with various prepared materials on tape—one tape for each musician—that, while running continuously throughout the two-hour shows, were activated at will by each player with a foot pedal, creating unexpected interjections that could drive the group in entirely different directions.

Other than a few very sketchy markers and Frith's "The March"—a two-chord, 3/4 time vamp with a quirky yet still lyrical melody that gave each concert's end greater definition—this was about as unapproachable as Henry Cow ever got, and yet amongst the densities and at times harsh realms are moments of profound beauty. The 80-minute improvisation, spread over two discs, demonstrates the kind of intuitive push-and-pull that could only come from musicians not just spending a great deal of time playing together, but also living together, with a potent ability to sometimes shift ambience and color at the drop of a dime (even if, on a practical level, that dime was hard to come by).

AAJ