THE MOTHERS OF INVENTION: ABSOLUTELY FREE

Soon after the release of their debut album in 1966, the Mothers of Invention followed that up with the brilliantly weird and often undecipherable 'Absolutely Free', an early staple of experimental rock that once again displayed the originality of the band and their effortless and satirical approach towards rock music, all while playing some of the most fascinating music to have come out of the late 1960s. Much like 'Freak Out!', the music on here is adventurously avant-garde and offers several completely unorthodox pieces of rock and pop music, with the MOI drawing in influences from all over the place (blues, psychedelia, garage rock, classical and fusion references grace the two sides of the original LP). Besides, this time we have an eight-piece band working itself around, plus a ton of guest musicians, with virtually every single member of this wicked art collective contributing to the bedazzling and disturbingly surreal passages of music and their corresponding sceneries, since the earliest music of Zappa and the Mothers is incredibly vivid and resembling what we could refer to as "a film for listening".

Herein, many of the shorter pieces actually make up for longer suites, led by a certain musical motif around which the rest of the compositions are developed, which in many regards works as the anticipation of the progressive rock style and what the bands associated with it would go on to experiment with later on. Not an easy album to dissect or digest, similarly to the debut, 'Absolutely Free' still has some really fine pieces like the great suites 'The Duke of Prunes' and 'Call Any Vegetables' on side one, with a strong display of Zappa's improvisational style of play, and the garage-prog collage of sounds found on side two ('Brown Shoes Don't Make It') with all of its quirky accompanying shorter tracks. The strengths of this album overshadow its downsides for sure, which is very likely why this release is well-respected and seen as a significant part of the classic MOI catalogue, and despite its obvious but cheerfully chaotic and patchy flaws, 'Absolutely Free' indicates a desire for rebellion as well as a vision of ominous quirkiness that we just cannot ignore.

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