Consumer Guide Album

Henry Cow: Unrest [Red, 1979]
Finally released in the States five years after it came out in Britain, this demanding music shows up such superstar "progressives" as Yes for the weak-minded reactionaries they are. The integrity of Cow's synthesis is clearest in "Bittern Storm Over Ulm," based on the Yardbirds' "Got to Hurry"--instead of quoting sixteen bars with two or three instruments, thus insuring their listeners another lazy identification, they break the piece down, almost like beboppers. Though the saxophone is still second-rate and the more lyrical rhythms flirt with a cheap swing, the band is worthy of its classical correlatives--Bartok, Stockhausen, and Varese rather than Tchaikovsky and predigested Bach. A-