November 1978. Henry Cow disbands after a decade of music that redefined the boundaries of experimental rock. November 2022. Four founding members return to the stage. Not to look back - but to improvise the present. Fred Frith (guitar, violin, electronics), Tim Hodgkinson (keyboards, saxophone, lap steel, electronics), Chris Cutler (drums, percussion), John Greaves (bass, vocals): the original core reunited under the name Henry Now. The key is in the name - as Clive Bell noted in The Wire, this is not a nostalgia project.
No scores. No prepared material. Only the instinct honed over fifty years of sonic exploration. For many, the music of Henry Cow represented a transformative listening experience - complex, challenging, enduringly influential. Each of these four musicians has since pursued their own path - tireless explorers of sound, from Skeleton Crew to Art Bears, from The Work to countless solo ventures. The decision to come together again, decades after their original journey, was met with shared conviction.
Then Again documents the concert of November 18, 2022 in Piacenza, organized by Max Marchini of Dark Companion Records. An hour of fully improvised music - abstract, constantly shifting, without predetermined climaxes. Four voices that don't need to look at each other to understand. Ideas emerging, interweaving, dissolving. Rhythms in harmony and counterpoint. Structures building and collapsing. The resulting music reflects over fifty years of individual and collective evolution, without compromise.
Edited and mixed by Frith in two distinct versions for vinyl and CD - two different paths through the same sonic territory.
Bold, forward-looking, uncompromising.