National Health

Among the uncommon English progressive ensembles active in the mid-1970s, National Health produced work whose freshness persists to the present. Imaginative linear musicality underpinned their approach, frequently expressed through jazz-infused structures that spotlighted lengthy instrumental passages. Formed amid the period when punk displaced progressive rock, the band drew personnel from Canterbury and post-Canterbury outfits including Hatfield and the North (itself viewed as a Canterbury supergroup), Gilgamesh, and Henry Cow. Following the 1977 debut album National Health and the 1978 follow-up Of Queues and Cures, the group delivered 1982’s D.S. Al Coda, a tribute to keyboardist Alan Gowen, who succumbed to leukemia in May 1981, before disbanding while members explored separate projects. The 1990 compilation Complete surveyed their catalog; Missing Pieces, assembling previously unreleased recordings from the band’s earliest lineups, arrived in 1996. Cuneiform released the live album Playtime in 2000; captured at two 1979 concerts, it was sequenced and mastered that year by Phil Miller and Pip Pyle in Gowen’s memory.