Your cart (0 item)

BLEGVAD, PETER / JOHN GREAVES - Kew. Rhone

Format: CD Label & Cat.Number: ReR Megacorp ReR QR1 Release Year: 2015 Note: re-issue of LP from 1977 by the two ex HENRY COW members (+ LISA HERMAN and others) - one of the true classic albums of the progressive / art-rock / 'RIO - Rock in Opposition' movement... "Completely and utterly unlike any other album you're likely to come across. Ever." [Andy Gill NME] Price (incl. 19% VAT): €14.00 More Info "The classic restored. No extra tracks, just this legendary release as it was originally conceived. Kew Rhone was made soon after Peter and John left Henry Cow, at Carla Bley and Mike Mantler’s Grog Kill studio in New York (they both appear on the CD). Fellow conspirators included singer Lisa Herman and drummer Andrew Cyrille. It’s one of those records which sums up a moment; a creative moment in which ideas have come into clear focus, and just need to be got down; an historical moment at which an innovative, collaborative run of cultural luck is about to run out. It couldn’t have been made earlier or later, we’re just lucky it got made at all." [ReR website short info] "For decades this was a cult item. People fought about it. The songs are accessible, but difficult, the music - recorded at Carla Bley and Mike Mantler’s studio back in the JCOA days - is eccentric, extremely complex, but still catchy. Bley, Mantler and the legendary Andrew Cyrille all appear on it in arrangements that are… pretty off the wall. It’s rock, it’s jazz, it’s a song cycle, it’s a one-off hybrid with some traces of Henry Cow and Escalator over the Hill, it’s deep or indulgent, or both – but whichever line of approach you adopt, it’s art. And that makes it a major achievement. It also manages to be funny and charming while taking no prisoners in the high intellect department. After the Henry Cow/Slaphappy merger, Peter left and John followed him a year or so later. The two of them then concocted this highly ambitious project - a marriage of high literary ambition full of Ouliposeque anagrams, palindromes, missing letters and wordgames, and meticulous musical complexity rooted in show music, jazz and the fringes of experimental rock. The album design, text and musical content together embody a continuous, integrated, work: so the texts refer to the artwork (both are by Peter Blegvad) and vice versa; neither quite makes sense without the other. Pop Triva Fact: Kew. Rhone was released on the same day, and on the same label, as the Sex Pistols's Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols. Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols" [press release] "Completely and utterly unlike any other album you're likely to come across. Ever." Andy Gill NME "How in the name of God could anyone take lyrics so oblique, so obscure, so cerebral and fashion such a memorable tune out of them?" Jonathan Coe (author of The Rotter’s Club) “A neglected masterpiece of surreal rock…a musical Finnegan’s Wake” Clive Bell. The Wire. "A neglected masterpiece of '70s progressive rock” Stewart Mason, AllMusic. "The classic restored. No extra tracks, just this legendary release as it was originally conceived. Kew Rhone was made soon after Peter and John left Henry Cow, at Carla Bley and Mike Mantler’s Grog Kill studio in New York (they both appear on the CD). Fellow conspirators included singer Lisa Herman and drummer Andrew Cyrille. It’s one of those records which sums up a moment; a creative moment in which ideas have come into clear focus, and just need to be got down; an historical moment at which an innovative, collaborative run of cultural luck is about to run out. It couldn’t have been made earlier or later, we’re just lucky it got made at all." [label info] www.rermegacorp.com www.rermegacorp.com