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Frith in Retroperspective

Cheap at Half the Price

by Fred Frith
ReR Megacorp, London, UK, 2004
Audio CD-ROM, FRO 06, $13.00
Distributor’s website: http://
www.rermegacorp.com.

Allies

by Fred Frith
ReR Megacorp, London, UK, 2004
Audio CD-ROM, FRO 07, $13.00
Distributor’s website: http://
www.rermegacorp.com.

Reviewed by René van Peer
Bachlaan 786, 5011 BS Tilburg, The Netherlands

r.vanpeer@wxs.nl

These titles start off the second batch of Fred Frith re-issues through the ReR Megacorp imprint Fred Records. Cheap at Half the Price was originally released in 1983 as the third and last solo album Frith recorded for Ralph Records. Allies was apiece commissioned by Bebe Miller to accompany a dance performance in 1989, and was released in a revised version (the rhythm track, for which a drum computer had been used, was replaced by Joey Baron's drumming) by RecRec Music in 1996.

After the demise of the groundbreaking British impro-rock group, Henry Cow, by the end of the 1970s, Frith embarked energetically on an incredible variety of projects. Among these were the groups Art Bears, Massacre, and Skeleton Crew, and collaborations with Material, The Residents, and with numerous individual musicians. And, of course, solo exploits. These included the Ralph albums, but also improvised concerts, such as those in a tour through Japan in 1981, which was captured on a magnificent double LP-set.

Up till then, Frith's music had sounded like a tightrope act that had him balance between the production of uncompromisingly intense sounds and sumptuously beautiful melodies that could easily be danced to. The sounds he accomplished were very often the result of having to work under low budget circumstances. The need to adapt to limitations set by non state-of-the-art studio equipment pushed his creativity to uncommon levels. He made extensive use of recordings captured at home and around town and processed these tapes with scissors and glue. On the two previous solo albums for Ralph, he had invited guest musicians from bands he was working with; the instruments he himself played included (apart from guitar, bass guitar, violin and keyboards) all manner of homemade contraptions.

These instruments also made their appearance on Cheap at Half the Price. What was new, however, was that besides these, he played a Casio 101, and that he actually sang. Moreover, on the face of it most of the tracks (half of them songs, half of them instrumentals) seemed to exude a happy-go-lucky mood——with backing vocals going 'ooh' in the refrain to the opening song Some Clouds Don't. As Chris Cutler writes in the ReR online catalogue, it caused "raised eyebrows at the time (from, as Fred calls them 'progressive music snobs'——of which I guess I was one) for its apparent simplicity and departure from what was then thought of as Fred Style."

I have to admit that I was also one of those snobs. Listening to this re-issue more than 20 years later, I am astonished and embarrassed to find how little I grasped back then of what Frith had put into it. Not only was it to a large extent consistent with what he had been doing, traces of earlier albums made their way onto this one. Some Clouds Do is built on the same driving rhythm of Pauls Sears' drumming as What a Dilemma on Gravity. The fun and dance at the end of Don't Cry for Me on that same album surfaces on Cheap at Half the Price in Absent Friends. Sometimes collaborations he was doing with other musicians seem to filter through in his own music. The keyboard melody of Walking Song sounds like it might have come from a Residents album.

On the other hand, Cheap at Half the Price foreshadowed the work he was about to do with Tom Cora in Skeleton Crew——deceptively simple catchy songs with melodies that grow from Scandinavian and Eastern European traditional music styles that they both loved, danceable rhythms, an inventive use of basic tools (during a concert at the Moers festival Frith at one point played percussion by quickly stroking a microphone with a paint brush), and prerecorded tapes of voices of power that lose much of their authority in this setting.

Tracing this lineage makes clear that this album was very much part of the complex of musical activities Frith engaged in at the time, rather than a departure. More than that, he wove lots of those strands together into one coherent work. It bursts with inventiveness, and eradiates the irrepressible joy of playful creativity. It does have its darker side as well, however. Same old Me is gloomily introspective, thrust forward by relentless bass and percussion, a litany of helpless discontent capped with a delirious fanfare. It is one of the examples of the complexity flowing underneath the seemingly carefree and beaming surface. It is only toward the end that this strange spell of contradictory moods is broken by the elated guitar and violin solos in Absent Friends.

Allies (minus the drums) was made six years later, and released (with drums added) in 1996. Again, as on Cheap at Half the Price, inventive studio work plays a role on this album. Frith's guitar melodies are immediately recognizable, but the overall effect is totally different from the earlier title. No catchy tunes, but rather a careful and thoughtful development of basic material, making the music sometimes reminiscent of The Necks. What is different, though, is that the ongoing movement of the music often gets ruffled by sudden intrusions, like a train of thought temporarily disoriented by flashes of insight, before doggedly moving on; and that Frith is seconded by George Cartwright on alto sax, Tom Cora on cello, and Joey Baron on drums.

Frith himself provides the backbone of the music on bass, keyboards and guitar. Cora and Cartwright join him, sometimes with solos, sometimes strutting the central structure, sometimes falling through the roof. The opening track Rifka, for instance, is built around long soft-toned chords on the keyboard and strings of the guitar being hit at a medium pace. Cora's cello, initially following Frith's guitar picking, plays a whimsical melody of brief hocketing notes, interspersed with outbreaks on the guitar and the saxophone. Every now and then the whole thing breaks down and starts again with a long drawn out glissando slicing through the ensemble like a hot knife through butter. And all the time Baron imperturbably ticks, pats, and hits around his kit, undaunted by bouts of excitement or disarray. This detached mode is of course absolutely appropriate, as Baron added his playing years after the others had committed their music to tape.

The way in which Baron's drumming fits seamlessly in the music is indicative of the meticulous work that went into constructing Allies. Listening closely, you'll hear with how much care Frith worked on the finer details of the recording. Although the album has six cuts, the efforts of the musicians unite these into one consistent flow, even when chord structures and melodies vary. It does have a longer span than Cheap at Half the Price, which consists of separate tunes, but the energy of the former seems more restrained, subdued. Allies is a river of sound to float around in. Cheap is an album to wryly tap your toes to.

 

 




Updated 1st April 2005


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