Art Bears

condition (record/cover): NM / EX+

One-sided disc on clear vinyl with printed flip side and green stamp on label. Silk-screened gatefold sleeve.

A live 7" extension of one of Winter Songs' most arresting moments. "Man And Boy" is the central piece on side two of the 1979 LP, a male-voice procession set against Dagmar Krause's lead, devotional music for a faithless century. The Coda captures the Art Bears onstage during their European tour of April-May 1979, when the trio of Fred Frith, Chris Cutler and Krause was augmented by Peter Blegvad and Marc Hollander, and the song spilled into a long improvised passage that the studio version had not allowed.

Issued in a small silkscreened sleeve on Rē Records as part of the label's hand-edition series (the "+h" designation refers to Rē's program of screen-printed numbered objects), the disc is more artefact than commercial single. The performance opens with the familiar chorale and proceeds into an extended coda built around Frith's prepared violin and Cutler's electrified drums. Krause's voice ascends and dissolves. It runs over seven minutes and is, in a real sense, the Art Bears' farewell to live form.

For collectors of the Rē Records small-run program this original vintage pressing remains one of the most striking objects in the label's catalog: the trio captured at full intensity, on a format that refused to behave like a single. Hand-numbered, screen-printed, scarce.