Zeena Parkins is an American composer and multi-instrumentalist active in experimental, free improvised, contemporary classical, and avant-jazz music; she is known for having "reinvented the harp". Parkins performs on standard harps, several custom electric harps, piano, and accordion. She is a 2019 Guggenheim Fellow and professor in the Music Department at Mills College.
Henry Cow were an English experimental rock group, founded at the University of Cambridge in 1968 by multi-instrumentalists Fred Frith and Tim Hodgkinson. Henry Cow's personnel fluctuated over their decade together, but drummer Chris Cutler, bassist John Greaves, and bassoonist/oboist Lindsay Cooper were important long-term members alongside Frith and Hodgkinson.
Dagmar Krause 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.
Chris Cutler is an English percussionist, composer, lyricist and music theorist. Best known for his work with English avant-rock group Henry Cow, Cutler was also a member and drummer of other bands, including Art Bears, News from Babel, Pere Ubu and (briefly) Gong/Mothergong. He has collaborated with many musicians and groups, including Fred Frith, Lindsay Cooper, Zeena Parkins, Peter Blegvad, Telectu and The Residents, and has appeared on over 100 recordings. Cutler's career spans over four decades and he still performs actively throughout the world.
Slapp Happy was a German/English avant-pop group, formed in Germany in 1972. Their lineup consisted of Anthony Moore (keyboards), Peter Blegvad (guitar) and Dagmar Krause (vocals). The band members moved to England in 1974 where they merged with Henry Cow, but the merger ended soon afterwards and Slapp Happy split up. Slapp Happy's sound was characterised by Dagmar Krause's unique vocal style. From 1982 there have been brief reunions to create an opera called Camera, record the album Ça Va in 1998, and perform shows around the world.
Recommended Records (RēR) is a British independent record label and distribution network founded by Chris Cutler with Nick Hobbs in March 1978. RēR features largely "Rock in Opposition" and related music, but it also distributes selected music released on other independent labels.
In Praise of Learning is a studio album by British avant-rock group Henry Cow, recorded at Virgin Records' Manor studios in February and March 1975, and released in May 1975. On this album, Henry Cow had expanded to include members of Slapp Happy, who had merged with the group after the two had collaborated on Desperate Straights in 1974. The merger ended after recording In Praise of Learning when Peter Blegvad and Anthony Moore from Slapp Happy left the group.
Lindsay Cooper was an English bassoon and oboe player and composer. 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).
Bill Gilonis is an English guitarist and composer. He co-founded the gritty experimental rock group The Work in 1980 with Tim Hodgkinson. The group was active intermittently until 1993, recording four albums and touring extensively, including in Russia, Japan Finland, Yugoslavia and Switzerland.
Henry Cow Box is a seven-CD limited edition box set by English avant-rock group Henry Cow. It was released in December 2006 by Recommended Records and comprises the six original albums Henry Cow released between 1973 and 1979, including those recorded with Slapp Happy. A bonus 3" CD-single was given to advance subscribers of the box set which contains previously unreleased material taken from live performances in Europe by the Orckestra, a merger of Henry Cow, the Mike Westbrook Brass Band and folk singer Frankie Armstrong in 1977. The two bonus CD Orckestra tracks were later reissued on the 2019 Henry Cow Box Redux: The Complete Henry Cow bonus CD, Ex Box – Collected Fragments 1971–1978.
Work Resumed on the Tower is a 1984 studio album by English avant-rock group News from Babel. It was recorded at Tim Hodgkinson's Cold Storage Recording Studios in Brixton, London, in October and November 1983, and released in 1984. It was their debut album and included guest vocalist Phil Minton. The music on the album was composed by Lindsay Cooper and the song texts were written by Chris Cutler.
Letters Home is a 1986 studio album by English avant-rock group News from Babel. It was recorded at Tim Hodgkinson's Cold Storage Recording Studios in Brixton, London, in 1985 and 1986, and was released in 1986. It was their second album and included guest vocalists Robert Wyatt, Dagmar Krause, Sally Potter and Phil Minton. Krause was listed here as a guest and only sang on two songs.
Complete is a three-CD box set by the English avant-rock band News from Babel. It contains remastered and repackaged releases of the two News from Babel albums, Work Resumed on the Tower (1984) and Letters Home (1986), plus an illustrated CD of their 7" single, "Contraries" (1984). The first album comprises the two song-suites Sirens and Silences and Work Resumed on the Tower, while the second album contains the Letters Home song-suite. The box set also contains a book of song texts and artwork.
Each in Our Own Thoughts is a 1994 solo album by English experimental music composer and performer Tim Hodgkinson from Henry Cow. It is his second solo album, after Splutter (1985), and comprises six unreleased pieces composed by Hodgkinson between 1976 and 1993. They were recorded in 1993 and co-released in 1994 on CD by Woof Records in the United Kingdom and Megaphone Records in the United States.
Volume 6: Stockholm & Göteborg is a live album by English avant-rock group Henry Cow, and is disc 6 of the 10-disc 40th Anniversary Henry Cow Box Set. It was released in September 2008 by RēR Megacorp as a free-standing album in advance of the box set release in January 2009.
The 40th Anniversary Henry Cow Box Set is a nine-CD plus one-DVD limited edition box set by English avant-rock group Henry Cow, and was released by RēR Megacorp in January 2009. It consists of almost 10 hours of previously unreleased recordings made between 1972 and 1978 from concerts, radio broadcasts, one-off projects, events and the studio. Included are new compositions, over four hours of free improvisation, and live performances of some of Henry Cow's original LP repertoire.
"Erk Gah" is a song written by Tim Hodgkinson for the English experimental rock group Henry Cow. "Erk Gah" was performed live by the band between 1976 and 1978, but was never recorded in the studio; three live performances of the song would later be released on the live album Stockholm & Göteborg in 2008 and the compilation The 40th Anniversary Henry Cow Box Set in 2009. In 1993, fifteen years after Henry Cow disbanded, Hodgkinson recorded the composition under the title "Hold to the Zero Burn, Imagine" for his solo album Each in Our Own Thoughts (1994), featuring former Henry Cow members Chris Cutler, Lindsay Cooper, and Dagmar Krause.
The Last Nightingale is an album by various artists recorded and released in 1984 to raise money for striking coal miners in the 1984–1985 UK miners' strike. It features Chris Cutler, Tim Hodgkinson and Lindsay Cooper from the English avant-rock group Henry Cow, singer and musician Robert Wyatt, and poet Adrian Mitchell. The cover artwork was done by British cartoonist and caricaturist Ralph Steadman.
Rarities Volumes 1 & 2 is a 2014 posthumous double-CD compilation album of various pieces by English experimental musician and composer Lindsay Cooper. It was recorded between 1979 and 1992, and released in the UK and US by RēR Megacorp in 2014. The compilation was also released by ReR Megacorp in Japan in 2015.
The Henry Cow Box Redux: The Complete Henry Cow is a seventeen-CD plus one-DVD box set by English avant-rock group Henry Cow; it was released by RēR Megacorp in November 2019. The box set comprises the previously released 2006 Henry Cow Box and the 2009 40th Anniversary Henry Cow Box Set, totalling over sixteen hours. A bonus CD: Ex Box – Collected Fragments 1971–1978 was given to advance subscribers of the 2019 Box Redux, and contains newly recovered and previously unreleased recordings, plus the contents of the 2006 box set bonus CD-single: "Unreleased Orckestra Extract". The 2019 Box Redux plus the Ex Box bonus CD contains all the officially released studio and live recordings of Henry Cow, excluding "Bellycan" as released on the 1991 East Side Digital version of Legend, and the complete version of "The Glove" from the 1991 East Side Digital version of Unrest.
