Unrest

Henry Cow's second album is the best place to launch into the career of this ambitious band. Where their debut (LEGEND) contained the essential characteristics of the band, it was without UNREST's unified flow. Henry Cow's third album, IN PRAISE OF LEARNING, found the band expanded to an eight-piece ensemble with additional writers--no less worthy an enterprise, just a different direction than they'd previously taken. By the time of UNREST, reed player Geoff Leigh had departed and was replaced by Lindsay Cooper on bassoon and oboe. The woodwind resonance adds warmth to the proceedings. UNREST was also influenced by the band's decision to approach the studio as a compositional tool, improvising about half of the album, and by their tour with the German group Faust.