Art Bears - Music

Music

Art Bears's music was often deeply political in content (reflecting the band's socialist leanings) and frequently avant-garde and experimental. They were more "song oriented" than Henry Cow, although much of the material on their debut album was actually written with the intention of being performed by the latter band.

Their music was "very dark in concept and in atmosphere". Reviewing The Art Box, the BBC described it as: "Carefully wrought dissonances, angular folk tunes, sudden shifts in dynamics, dense layers of spectral drones, slabs of noise, topped off with Dagmar's strange, elastic Sprechstimme."

Krause's voice contributed significantly to the mood and character of the songs. Cutler said:

I don't write simple or obvious words, they are not easy to sing. Dagmar had the amazing ability to make them make sense, to make them sound obvious. She sings from the inside and her accent helps to lift words out of their slots and give them a slightly resonant displacement. No one else could have done what Dagmar did on those LPs. I'm still amazed by her.

In "progressive" circles, the Art Bears were generally well received. Allmusic wrote: "Their life was fleeting, but the Art Bears wrote and recorded bold, challenging, idiosyncratic music that, despite its occasional difficulty, is ultimately very rewarding."