Road Vol.1-5, The

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This is It. The monument. The treasure trove. The big mama. The definitive set of Henry Cow archives. Drummer Chris Cutler had been talking about it since the early '80s. The project was set in motion in 2005 and took three years to complete. Cutler probably agonized long and hard over what to keep and what to throw away, and engineer Bob Drake accomplished mastering miracles with the tapes, some of which were in a terrible state (and he has extensively chronicled the mastering process on his website). The results: a total of nine CDs and one DVD released as two box sets that are sold separately, each consisting of a 60-page booklet (a different one for each box) and five jewel-cased discs housed in a sturdy open-faced cardboard box. Box one is titled The Road, Vols. 1-5 and covers the group's beginnings up to 1976. Disc one consists of all pre-Leg End material (1973 and earlier), including early versions of Leg End pieces and two Fred Frith songs ("Rapt in a Blanket" and the extremely Robert Wyatt-like "Came to See You") previously unavailable on an official release. However, the real treat is Frith's complete suite "With the Yellow Half Moon and Blue Star," only an excerpt of which had appeared on the group's first LP. Similarly, disc two (1974-1975) offers live recordings of compositions from their second LP, Unrest, but also a long piece blending themes by Tim Hodgkinson and improvised sections. The Hamburg concert on disc three was recorded by NDR radio and features an overall excellent performance by the first sextet lineup (with John Greaves on bass), plus two tracks featuring guest vocals by Wyatt. However, the crown jewel of the first box is Trondheim, a two-disc set from May 1976 featuring a short-lived quartet lineup without either a singer (Dagmar Krause being ill at the time) or a bassist. Thus reconfigured, Henry Cow decided not to rearrange existing written material in favor of an all-improvisation approach that yielded some of their darkest and most thrilling music. Since the five discs of this first box are packaged in four jewel cases (one being a double), there is one slot left in the box to slip in the previously released Concerts album. The booklet of The Road, Vols. 1-5 contains detailed track notes and testimonies by Greaves, Cutler, Geoff Leigh, Lindsay Cooper (reprinted), Peter Blegvad, and Krause, plus a list of concerts. ~ Francois Couture