Unrest (Henry Cow album)
| Unrest | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
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| Studio album by Henry Cow | ||||
| Released | May 1974 | |||
| Recorded | February–March 1974 | |||
| Studio | The Manor, Oxfordshire, England | |||
| Genre | Avant-rock, avant-garde jazz | |||
| Length | 40:08 | |||
| Label | Virgin (UK) | |||
| Producer | Henry Cow | |||
| Henry Cow chronology | ||||
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| Professional ratings | |
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| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| AllMusic |   |
| Robert Christgau | A− |
Unrest is an album by British avant-rock group Henry Cow, recorded at Virgin Records' Manor studios in February and March 1974. It was their second album and was released in May 1974. It was their first album including oboe and bassoon player Lindsay Cooper, who replaced saxophonist Geoff Leigh.
The album was dedicated to Robert Wyatt and Uli Trepte.
When Henry Cow began recording Unrest, they found they did not have enough composed material to fill the LP. Because of studio time constraints, they were forced to "improvise" and developed a "studio composition" process that involved improvising to tape, tape manipulation, loops, layering and overdubbing. The balance of the LP (tracks 2 to 5 on side 2) were "composed" in this manner. On parts of "Ruins" and "Linguaphonie", the bassoon, alto saxophone, drums and voice were recorded at half or double speed.
The Fred Frith composition "Bittern Storm over Ülm" was a "perversion" of one of his favourite Yardbirds songs, "Got to Hurry" (1965) into which he added bars, beats and half-beats. For "Ruins", Frith used Fibonacci numbers to establish beat and harmony, after reading about Hungarian composer Béla Bartók's use of the Fibonacci series. "Solemn Music" was from Henry Cow's music for John Chadwick's play, The Tempest, and is the only piece from that suite to be released.
The vocal/piano piece at the end of "Deluge" is sung and played by John Greaves.
The album cover art work was by artist Ray Smith and was the second of the three "paint socks" to feature on Henry Cow's albums. Smith was an old friend of the band from Cambridge who had worked with them on two dance projects and had often supported them in performance art at concerts. Smith came up with the idea of the woven sock and insisted that the band's name should not appear on the front cover. As Cutler later explained, in a 2011 interview, the idea was extended through the whole album series, with the sock changing "to suit the temper of the music".
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