Middle of the Moment

by Fred Frith
ReR, Denver, 2004
Audio CD-ROM, 14 tracks, $15.00
LC-02677, ReR/FRO 05
Distributor’s website: http://www.rermegacorp.com/.

Reviewed by Stefaan Van Ryssen
Hogeschool Gent
Jan Delvinlaan 115, 9000 Gent, Belgium

stefaan.vanryssen@pandora.be

I have always found it extremely difficult explaining in words what the differences are between a moderately well done collage, a collection of nice soundscapes, a fine collection of transformed and manipulated sounds, an excellent piece of concrete music and a brilliant electro-acoustical composition. Of course, there are different sources of the sounding material, the transformations and manipulations of that source material takes many forms and the relative importance of the so-called original, unadulterated material——which is never really original since it has been recorded, filtered, enhanced and otherwise digitally or analogically changed——and the added, synthesized or purposefully performed sounds varies widely. But, when listening to the end product, the audience may find it very hard to distinguish one musical category from the other. It is then a bit cheap to revert to avoiding the question altogether and asking: 'Is it any good?' or, cheaper still and missing the point of musical appreciation entirely: 'Does it sound nice?'.

If we take all the things described above as one big broad category, what are the criteria to apply? Obviously, any reader with a more than fleeting interest in aesthetics will know that there is no definitive answer. Or rather, giving an answer is similar to entering a minefield where every step in a predefined direction, any appraisal given with a degree of certainty and conviction and based on explicit principles may explode in one's face at the next turn of the CD in the player. I can hear you shout: 'Come back! Retrace your steps. Be pragmatic for once, and leave it to the academic miners to clear the field!'. But, not being an American and feeling the heavy weight of Kant's and Adorno's heritage on my shoulders, I have to draw a line. I can't avoid it: There has to be some guideline, some set of rules I can hold on to when saying: This is worthwhile, and that isn't. And, thank all the gods and seraphims in the musical heavens that there is at least the music of Fred Frith (among others, of course) to help me find some beacons.

Middle of the Moment is a musical journey in 14 stages through Tuareg country, along the Northern Sahara. Each stage involves a different way of listening. At some points we hear the unedited singing of a group of Tuareg somewhere in the desert, at other places Frith added elements from entirely different sources: the sound of the surf at some coast, "trucks and trains, wells, winds, filmmakers, flies, fire and thunder, camels, goats and the jackal, the audience, the argument, and other ghosts" (CD-cover) and violins, accordions, Tibetan rattles, drums, percussion and woodwinds. In some indefinable way——Frith's way, certainly——one gets the impression of actually moving along with a group of Tuareg on a seemingly endless journey:

"On all journeys you find your way by the stars, the way they rise above us and disappear in one line. You follow them until the last one has risen and disappeared again, behind us. [...] We loaded the camels and set out into the Té né ré, and we were very thirsty. We walked, and walked, and walked for five days, but the well was dry. Then, we unloaded the baggage and continued for five days to the next well. We fetched water, and the again five days back to our baggage. And then again five days from there to where we are now..." (CD cover).

And at any point, the sound betrays nothing of what lays behind or of what lies ahead. At each stage, one is, literally, in the "middle of the moment". Here and now.

Middle of the Moment is much more than the soundtrack of a film about the desert dwellers of the Sahara. (The film is available on DVD on the famous German Winter & Winter label). It is a landmark, a touchstone for collages and soundscapes because each single track shows how the blending of materials can be done with respect for the original recordings, with imagination and with an eye on the overall end result. Recorded and composed sounds find each other; they interact and enter in an intriguing dialogue of support, contrast and mutual enrichment. And it takes Fred Frith to make them do so.