Henry Cow - Western Culture

Western Culture is the last album by Henry Cow, recorded at Sunrise Studios in Kirchberg, Switzerland in January, July and August 1978. It was released on Henry Cow's own private label, Broadcast, in 1979. Later editions appeared on Interzone in the US and Celluloid in France. Only the UK Broadcast pressing used the custom label artwork design.

Western Culture is an instrumental album which came about as a result of disagreements in the band as to what the composition of their next album should be. Recording had already begun at Sunrise Studios in January 1978 and some members were not happy about the predominance of song-oriented material. As a compromise it was agreed that two albums would be made: one of "songs" (released soon after as Hopes and Fears under the name of a new group Art Bears) and one of purely instrumental compositions.
The group returned to Sunrise Studios in July that year to record the instrumental pieces for Western Culture, except "½ the Sky", which had been recorded during the January sessions.
Henry Cow split up shortly after recording this album.

Listen the full album on Youtube (Tracks 1 to 7 are the original tracklist, 8 to 11 are the bonus tracks from the 2001 cd re-issue):