LUMPY GRAVY

I give this 4 stars, although, with the years, it came to be one of my favourites in Zappa collection. This is Frank's first solo album and it couldn't be more underground. I'm sure he wanted it this way. Hermetic, strange, misterious, theatrical, full of absurd dialogues, complex arrangements of old and forthcoming melodies. A kind of collage in the same vein as the times. Of course, this means it is one of the most neglected records by listeners all over. It is very difficult to assess this in terms of chords and notes only, it is really a movie, a surreal movie, for our ears (as he states later in Hot Rats). The overall atmosphere is on the verge of collapsing, it seems the structures that support the music are made of thin paper. But this is only apparent because with repeated listening we figure out that the collage is very well crafted, the arrangements are complex, the melodies are inventive. To understand the concept of this record we might have to consider the final line: Because round things are boring. Zappa knew that through repeated hearings records can become boring and he made this one a hard one to swallow. It is a record that cannot be reproduced on any other medium, makes use of recording technics and has a sense as a whole. With this one Frank Zappa excedes music. He reworks this notion and thinks it in terms of sound. In his third record, Frank Zappa confirms, in 1968, that he is THE composer of the XX century. For anyone who likes progrock but doesn't like to stick with rigid formulations.