Prints.
Snapshots, Postcards, Messages and Miniatures
1987-2001
by Fred Frith
ReR MEGACORP,
Thornton Heath, 2002
£11.50
http://www.rermegacorp.com.
Reviewed
by Stefaan Van Ryssen
Hogeschool Gent
Jan Delvinlaan 115, 9000 Gent, Belgium
stefaan.vanryssen@pandora.be
Fred Frith has
always been a millipedic musician, and
this record testifies to the point. It
shows some of the thousand skills he masters,
the main one being, of course, improvisation.
Six of the songs "were recorded for a
WDR radio production by Alexander Schumacher.
The aim of the program was to explore
the nature of improvisation. I was supposed
to create pieces spontaneously, using
my choices from a long list of sampled
fragments that I heard only after arriving
in the studio. The texts were derived
from whatever was in the newspaper on
the day of the recording. All these songs
were composed and constructed directly
onto tape without preparation." The result
has a certain immediacy and urgency. The
songs are constructed over some simple
bass line mixed with the sample, adding
guitars and keyboards, and finally a voice.
Simple elements do not make a simple dish,
though. 'Stones,' for example, reinvents
the waltz, limping as if hit in the leg
by a bullet, and not inappropriately the
accompanying text is about the Palestinian
Independence Celebrations in Hebron, 1997.
'I want it to be over' is a frightening
song on a text from the International
Herald Tribune, repeating over and
over a phrase from an interview with Bill
Clinton about Monica Lewinsky. Frith uses
samples of broken glass and an Escher-loop
for this miniature drama. As improvisation
goes, this is top class. The interactions
between the samples and the instruments
are subtle and never obvious. What starts
as a banal song suddenly turns into a
universal message ("Reduce me"),
and what appears to be mere camp at first
hearing is a sarcastic comment on manipulation
and mass hysteria (Levity).
The other songs include a remake of Serge
Gainsbourgs 'The balad of Melody
Nelson', dark, morose, mysterious, criminal,
vintage Gainsbourg with an ironical twist
because of the funny accent in the French
lyrics.
One needs to listen carefully to these
seemingly simple tracks, but they will
reveal themselves after a while, leaving
the listener not with insight in the nature
of the process of improvisation but with
awe at what a master improviser can do
in real time.