FRED FRITH

I'm not familiar enough with most of Fred Frith's albums to know if this is really a compilation, but this is actually the soundtrack to a movie, a documentary about the great inventive guitarist. However, Norrgården Nyvla except for some sound effects at the beginning, does sound like the version on Gravity, not that that's a bad thing.

The collection itself is wonderful, showing all sides of Frith's skillful and innovative playing and composition. The songs range from sounds similar to The Residents, whose Commercial Album featured Frith as a sideman, to early Zappa, and even one song Evolution, with high pitched vocals and a reggae influenced beat, that sounds sort of like a deranged version of The Police.

This is a gem in my collection. Highly recommended for the ROI fan.

My copy of this recording is the ESD release, with ten extra bonus tracks, and almost twice as long as the original. Most of this album is very good, although much of it seems to be just ideas played out on the guitar, as opposed to fully developed songs. And a good sized chunk of the bonus tracks are just Frith making a bunch of noise on his guitar. As much as I love ROI, when it turns into a mess of random noise, it turns me off. But I digress. Frith's playing is often outstanding, and I can easily say that there is no other guitarist on Earth who sounds like him. While a few songs harken back tHenry Cow, most is pure Frith.

In my not so humble opinion, RIO is probably the most inventive, and certainly the most experimental of all of the subgenres of prog rock that we celebrate here. RIO albums are usually strange to the ear, but can also be beautiful, eerie, disturbing, and even sometimes unlistenable. This one falls into all the above categories except the last one.

First of all, my copy of this album, the ESD release, has six bonus tracks, so it is about 25 minutes longer than the tracks listed here. All the better.

At times, this album recalls Frith's work in the group Henry Cow (Hands Of The Juggler), at other times, you can hear a Zappa influence (Norrgarden Nyvla, the bonus track Moeris Dancing) or Captain Beefheart (Crack In The Concrete and Dancing In Rockville Maryland). There is even a song that sounds like The Residents (What A Dilemma).

This is a treat for any RIO fan.

— First review of this album —

I still have yet to find an album in this decade by Frith that I like as much as his '80's stuff. Fred's become a much serious musical artist, perhaps a bit too serious. The humor and politics is now a thing of the past. However if you are familiar with that era and didn't find it appealing, you might want to check out what he's been doing lately.

This is a hard album to categorize. Maybe it fits in with modern classical or something. We do have two electric guitarists (the second only plays with Frith on a piece called Stick Figures), but also a string quartet (two violins, a viola, and a violincello), with a trumpeter. I am at a loss of words to really describe this music. I guess the term that first comes to mind is dissonant. A quote from the liner notes; "kids playing, security guards with night sticks, radio static." It was only for a piece called Tense Serenity.

If you're coming at prog from a modern classical area, this just might be the thing for you. If you are coming at the music of Fred Frith from a more conventional prog rock place, I'd recommend you start somewhere else.

— First review of this album —

When talking about guitar heroes, one could easily quote Hendrix, Page, Clapton, Blackmore, Vai, Satriani, Zappa (that's a lot of Italian-American musicians now), Fripp... You can go on and on, name-dropping until the first rays of the sun. Yet Frith is closer to a free jazz tradition (Derek Bailey is the first name to come if looking for a possible influence) and the soundtrack reviewed here come in this tradition: past the title theme, don't expect solid rock riffs and obvious melodies. The album appears as a collection of atmospheres, Frith using more often tapes and sound effects than his guitar: a few piano notes here (Lucy leaves a note), drones in the backyard, samples of telephone conversations, a lot of unidentified sounds... On Channel Change, a melody explodes, a variation on the title theme; Underwater Dream gives a sad temper... Until Jane Siberry sings This Old Earth, the only true song of this record. Right after, you can dance to Donuts. Then, back to the ambient. Because this album obeys to the definition of ambient music given by Brian Eno: a discreet music.

Don't get me wrong: The Top of His Head is not a bad album. It needs to be known, it has its moments, its moods, it's not easy to be loveable and is not recommended (of course: it was published on Crammed records) to the beginners.

Cheap at Half the Price is the third solo album by Fred Frith, it is preceded by the brilliant world music influenced first album Gravity, and the more avant-garde sophomore effort Speechless. Cheap, just like Gravity, turns to Eastern Europe and the Middle East for musical inspiration, but unfortunately Cheap is not nearly as successful as Gravity. The difference between the two albums is that Gravity is mostly instrumental, but Cheap is made up of odd world/avant/pop songs that often feature Frith's 'quirky' vocals, and that is a problem.

Fred Frith cannot sing. I think he knows this but assumes that since this is avant-garde rock his clever socio-political insights will be good enough to pull things off. The truth is Frith's music sounds so much better when he stays instrumental, which is proven on this album by the several instrumental songs on side two. The other problem with Cheap is that a lot of the songs were built from pre-recorded drum tracks that repeat the same pattern (some of these drum patterns also show up on other Frith albums). Once again Gravity was much better because the songs were performed by live musicians playing creative arrangements that included a lot of rhythmic variations.

This album is OK, but Frith is capable of much better.

Never mind the usual question of whether or not music like this is Progressive Rock: the larger issue might be whether or not it's music at all. The simple answer is yes, of course it is, but obviously not for neophytes or casual fans. If you've grown bored of CAPTAIN BEEFHEART, if the RESIDENTS have outstayed their welcome, if even FRANK ZAPPA fails to challenge your world-weary ears anymore, where else can a student of outré musical arcana turn except to the avant-guitar noise of Fred Frith?

This 2002 album from his Maybe Monday quartet featured an unlikely combination of instruments: saxophone, cello, koto (a Japanese string instrument), and of course Frith's "treated" guitar, which often sounds like anything but. The music was recorded live in the studio on a two-track mixer, a bare- bones set-up to be sure, but affording the listener a thrilling immediacy rarely available outside an un- dubbed live performance.

And the title is certainly appropriate. Most of the songs (and I use the term only in its most generic sense) recall the final agony of animals suffering slow electrocution, adding up to 49-minutes of uneasy listening for only the most intrepid explorers. Overall, it's an eerie, unsettling collection of improvised noises, resolving itself only occasionally into an offhand alien groove or abstract ambient chill out.

Sometimes it isn't even clear which instrument is making what particular racket. But it's a safe bet the weirder digressions were generated by Frith himself, whose guitar technique (not unlike his compositional style) is unique and sometimes frightening. God only knows what he's doing to create these sounds: rubbing the strings of his guitar with sandpaper? Dropping fistfuls of cornflakes on the fret board?

There's a deliberate element of chance at play here, but it isn't entirely accidental. You've got to learn the rules before you can successfully break them, and Frith has been knocking conventional wisdom off its feet for almost four decades now as a professional musician.

Give this one time, and patience. What might at first sound like a free-form instrumental noise-fest will eventually become, among other things, the mechanized, almost industrial chatter of "The Prisoner's Dilemma" (with playful tape manipulation inflicting havoc on the tonal pitch), and the vaguely Oriental intensity of the koto-driven "Touch I Risk".

And a further benefit: when played loud enough, the album is guaranteed to clear any room of unwanted guests within sixty seconds. Now that's entertainment.

— First review of this album —

Putting the name of legendary avant-garde guitarist and composer Fred Frith on this collection of post- modern chamber pieces is a little disingenuous. Yes, he wrote all the music here, but Frith himself doesn't appear anywhere on the CD, which was recorded years later by the Rova Saxophone Quartet of San Francisco.

Intrepid fans of the HENRY COW/SLAPP HAPPY school of Rock in Opposition might have an inkling of what to expect. But casual listeners need to be forewarned: this is the outer limits of musical improvisation, performed entirely on four honking, dribbling, droning saxophones, and without question an acquired taste for even the most daring pair of ears.

Needless to say the album can be more than a little baffling at first exposure, especially for anyone needing the reassurance of a steady rhythm or recognizable melody. Sometimes it's possible to discern what sounds like an actual composition ("Water Under the Bridge" is the closest thing here to a genuine song), but mostly you'll find a daunting free-form cacophony of burps, blips and atonal freakouts, all of it sounding totally spontaneous but in truth never losing sight of the larger structure behind the whole work.

My advice to curious newcomers is to keep an open mind (and ear), and eventually the dissonance will give way to at least a semblance or order. Better yet, approach it with a sense of humor. Let's face it: the saxophone can be a silly-sounding musical instrument, and these guys (ace players, all of them) aren't afraid of allowing a little comic relief into what could easily have been a dry academic exercise.

They certainly know how to coax the weirdest noises out of their horns: toe-tapping one moment, and the next not unlike finding yourself trapped in small cage with a flock of retarded geese. At its best (and it definitely has its moments) the music evokes the imaginary soundtrack to an experimental East European art film (I was reminded of the disturbing, dreamlike stop-motion animations of Czech surrealist Jan Svankmajer). But for easier reference, consider that one of the tracks (with the Dr. Seuss-like title "T Square Park Lark") was dedicated to FRANK ZAPPA, clearly a kindred spirit of sorts.

The end result can be oddly effective, if heard in the proper (i.e. unbiased) frame of mind. The album is often graceful, occasionally just plain noisy, and altogether bizarre enough to easily recommend itself in a forum (like this one) celebrating the sometimes willfully un-commercial corners of modern music.

This is one of Frith's more accessible records, but it is hardly commercial. These are, for the most part, fairly short songs that mix traditional Persian and East European instrumental dance music with progressive rock, lounge exotica and Frith's unique brand of avant-garde improvisation. The progressive rock sections bear some resemblance to artists like Zappa, Fripp and Snakefinger. Frith and his band mates play a lot of acoustic stringed instruments such as violin, mandolin and acoustic guitar, but Frith also adds a lot of heavily sustained electric guitar melodies in the classic progressive rock tradition of Hackett, Manzanera and once again, Fripp.

Some songs on this album are worth special mention. Norrgarden Nyvla starts with a short quirky intro and then lays into a nice Indo- Persian groove. Frith plays a violin solo that might remind some of David Cross on The Talking Drum. After that lengthy section the whole song breaks down into an odd but catchy triple-tracked guitar melody that wouldn't sound too out of place on an early 70's Zappa record.

The track What a Dilemma is a driving avant hard rock song that is similar to Frith's noisy Massacre band, or some of King Crimson's more harsh tunes. A Career in Real Estate is a trip around the world musically that doesn't sound contrived or pretentious. Despite numerous style and meter changes the whole song hangs together thanks to Frith's ability to create coherent melodies that tie the different sections together. The only song that doesn't meet the standards of the rest of the album is his cover of Dancing in the Streets. The version by Martha Reeves will never be topped, the cover by Black Oak Arkansas isn't bad either, but this version is boring and tedious and contains none of the original's magic.

Fred Frith is one of the best composers to come out of the world of rock music. His ability to write interesting melodies with constantly shifting time signatures is unparalleled in this genre. If you want to check out his music, this album is a good place to start.

— First review of this album —

"Rivers and Tides { working with time" is the soundtrack from a film about British sculptor Andy Goldsworthy as he constructs and talks about various pieces of landscape sculpture and their relationship to natural elements of water over time.

Even though the music is split into 8 parts, melodic themes drift from one to another, or fade away to reappear later so that the individual parts flow together as a single 40 minute piece. It is the subtle change over time that is the basic premise of the film that also defines the music and allows it to stand alone without the accompaniment of the film itself. Short scratchy violin themes delicately mutate over the course of the piece, so that a slow laborious phrase from Part II becomes a shade softer and faster by Part IV and has blossomed into a jaunty refrain by Part VIII. Therefore, what appears to start as a haunting and ponderous piece of minimalism has become an upbeat (almost) folk tune by the end, skilfully leading the listener from the esoteric to the accessible before you realise what has happened. The result is still haunting, but it is also very beautiful.

I heard this music several years before seeing the film and there were a few elements in the composition that I initially found distracting. Frith composed the music against the final cut of the film, so what appears (when heard in isolation) to be almost random shifts and turns in the music, (together with the sporadic percussive sounds that seem so prevalent in music such as this), suddenly become meaningful and relevant when the film and music are combined. Similarly, the samples of running water and bleats of sheep that also occur as distractions in the music now fit with what is happening on the screen. Now I know the context of those distracting elements, I no longer find them distracting at all.

I want to give this a 3½ - Excellent, but see the DVD too, so to be fair I have rounded up to 4/5