LUMPY GRAVY

After the three first albums with THE MOTHERS OF INVENTION, Frank ZAPPA launched his first solo album "Lumpy gravy"; Frank ZAPPA's music was always characterized for being highly experimental and eclectic, always filled with weird comedy and bizarre noises here and there that gave his albums a very unique style that would be a later influence for an insane amount of bands and musicians, even so, this debut album was honestly not his best record.

I don't know if I should call the two segments of this record songs: it sounds like a very hybrid and chaotic compilation of unfinished songs that were gathered together trying to make them sound as a whole. The last three minutes of the first part are my favorite moment of the record: it is not a secret that a major influence in Frank ZAPPA's music was Edgad VARÈSE and these last three minutes sound almost exactly as if it was a VARÈSE composition.

The small segments of the album go from Avant-Garde symphonic sections to some very Hard Rock and even Proto-Punk kind of music; annoying recordings of guys talking and laughing about the most random stuff here and there and variations of white Blues and even Old West micro-compositions are also part of this chaotic album. Although I love and respect ZAPPA's music and I believe he made some of the most amazing records in the seventies, even when I adore that weird post-VARÈSE music and the whole Avant-Garde prog universe of RIO and bands such as UNIVERS ZÉRO and ART ZOYD that would play a lot of this kind of Avant-Garde prog that ZAPPA started (I think he was a pioneer on that), "Lumpy gravy" is very far from being one of the best works in ZAPPA's catalog, he developed his music much better in future albums, so for a start is good, but not great.

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