Winter Songs

1979

Personnel:

Dagmar Krause: Vocals

Chris Cutler: Percussion, Drums

Fred Frith: Guitar, Violin, Keyboards

with
Etienne Conod: Engineer, Mixing

The band is no longer augmented by wind players or extra musicians, so the music is much more sparse than on the debut, often with just percussion, guitar, and minimal piano or synthesizer along with Krause's vocals. The overall sound, however, has advanced, with better use of the studio as an instrument, and very advanced editing and mixing (mostly courtesy of Etienne Conod).

Although the texts are no longer based on political ideas, there is no shortage of weighty subject matter - just try to wade through "3 Figures"'s generational role analysis without alienating your hip indie-rock friends. Throughout, the tone is contemplative and solitary, and despite faint glimpses of light in "Three Wheels" and "The Hermit", the album is quite dour. Brutal truth, perhaps, with considerable abstraction.

Rats and Monkeys: Hyperkinetic rush of sound and beats. Nothing on the rest of the album approaches this kind of intensity, and you'd be hard pressed to find any other music from the time that sounded like this. Not punk, not prog, but pounding, relentless, and at lightspeed. Krause's protagonist repeatedly warns of vermin infesting the city, and just when you think you're out of the woods, Frith and Cutler come back with a furious coda, and then explode into nothing. Breathless, in a word.

Three Wheels: Dreamy meditation on wisdom and (dare I say) transcendence. Cutler has rarely been as whimsical on record, and the music is no easier to pin down. Grayish piano figure slides beneath Krause's deceptively dissonant vocal harmonies, while Cutler's reverse orchestra of cymbals and looped percussion rushes by. It should be intimidating, but it comes out warm, until the whole thing ends, and you wonder where you've been for the last half hour or so.

The World As It is Today

1981

Personnel:

Dagmar Krause: Vocals

Chris Cutler: Percussion, Drums

Fred Frith: Guitar, Violin, Keyboards

with
Etienne Conod: Engineer, Mixing

Robert Vogel: Engineer, Mixing

One aspect of Art Bears' sound that held true throughout their short lifetime is the constant advance in studio experimentation. This album is the most technically refined in their catalog, and features some very creative recording techniques. Also, the arrangements seem to have become more efficient since the debut, both in the amount of musicians involved and the ideas presented. Largely due to the work of engineers Conod and Vogel, the record sounds very modern, and has been influential on the avant-rock bands of today.

Krause deserves special attention on this album. The band runs through so many styles and atmospheres (witness the breadth of expression from the compressed rage of "FREEDOM" to something like the short mock-showtune "LAW"), her ease with the melody might belittle the difficulty of the music -- wrongly, of course. In the insular world of experimental rock music, vocalists with a sense of classical beauty and a distinctive personal style are very rare.

FREEDOM: Loping beast of a track featuring lyrics by Cutler at his most biting, and a chorus of Dagmars that eventually give way to one of the best examples of rage on record. Her persistent shriek beginning midway through is a testament to both the band's commitment to its message, and Krause's physical endurance. The tune is almost a hard waltz, but the time never quite settles in, while Frith plucks away at some distant, sarcastic piano in the background. Step back or be drenched in bile.

Song of the Martyrs: Over a resounding minor piano chord, Krause enters, and laments the current state of the working class at the expense of a fat, manipulative bureaucracy. Such is the MO of Art Bears, but even if you're not attracted by their politics, the music is cool. Lots of backwards percussion, vocal accents, and a fantastically urgent chorus, as Krause nervously observes "Everywhere around us, things are worse than ever!", as if being chased by nightmare fascists.

A Mere Coincidence

1999

Personnel:

Bob Drake: bass, vocals, guitar, drums

Stevan Tickmayer: keyboards, samplers, electronics

Chris Cutler: drums, low-grade electronics

with
Amy Denio: vocals

Fred Frith: guitars

Claudio Puntin: bass clarinet

Cutler's texts deal exclusively with scientific and mathematic theories; this may seem a fairly odd choice of subject matter for a "rock" band, but falls right in line with the kind of ambitious project with which Cutler and company are usually involved.

The actual music is very high level progressive/experimental rock, with shades of ambient and electronic thrown in. A lot of the music seems to be kind of a cut-and-paste affair, with tempo and texture changes flying by very quickly. Denio's rather straightforward singing takes a lot of the pretension out of the mix. Like much RIO-influenced music, it's not so much prog, as experimental, "rehearsal intensive" (as Cuneiform Records puts it) rock.

Mnemonic: This tune features the kind of disjunct, post-Naked City transitions that have made any RIO to the right of Tipographica obsolete, but here seem pretty fun. Very nice drumming from Cutler, who has occasionally gone for the eclectic when a simple pounding would have done. Maybe it's all Tickmayer's idea anyways. In any case, the band seems to gel like old friends throughout, and Puntin is the icing on the cake (here and throughout). A good start.

Engineering: Extended, spacious intro with seemingly rootless synth lines, and acoustic guitar gives way to Denio's otherworldly soprano - "A trace of DNA...", vocally stretched out like a vapor cloud. This is not your average RIO to be sure. Actually, one of the nicer aspects of this album (and Art Bears material as well) is the willingness to venture into lower intensity realms, sometimes approaching ambient. It's not soothing per say, but is quite capable of transporting you to another plane if you let it.

There Must be Something: "Nothing is impossible!" leaps out of Drake's very Jon Anderson-esque vocals, and the tune begins on a tear. It shortly leads to a kitchen-sink and found-sound treatment of the old big-bang question, and no less than the secret of the universe. Insistent, pulse gives way to random bursts of guitar feedback and firecrackers going off. Later, Denio enters, accompanied by Tickmayer's waltzing harpsichord almost in mockery of the weight of the subject, declaring "I mean there must be something, just by law..." Sure, and darned if the Science Group don't dance around it more ambitiously than anyone in recent memory.