Fred Frith
Everything Depends On Us: Zebulon L.A. Live Recording Vol. 1
Imagined by Zebulon and made possible by the artists who answered our call for support during the extended period when our doors were shut due to Covid, this compilation captures just a handful of the many magic moments that have occurred on our stage over the years.
All of the tracks featured on this album were recorded live at Zebulon LA between 2018 and 2020 – with the exception of the title track by Jonas Mekas, which was recorded at Zebulon Brooklyn in 2009. Jonas is posthumously with us in…
Guitar Talk: Conversations with VIsionary Players
Secrets of master musicians, revealed in conversation. Guitar Talk offers interviews with many of the most creative guitarists of our time. This new book presents these conversations, between Joel Harrison and Nels Cline, Pat Metheny, Fred Frith, Bill Frisell, Julian Lage, Elliott Sharp, Michael Gregory Jackson, Ben Monder, Anthony Pirog, Henry Kaiser, Mike and Leni Stern, Vernon Reid, Mary Halvorson, Nguyên Le, Rez Abbasi, Ava Mendoza, Liberty Ellman, Brandon Ross, Wayne Krantz, Dave Fiuczynski…
Live At Loft Shinjuku Tokyo Japan 23 July '81
Live At Loft Shinjuku Tokyo Japan 23 July '81 (with Totsuzen Danball) is a jazz related improv/composition music live album recording by Fred Frith released in 1982.
Eye To Ear III
*In process of stocking. 2022 stock.* Fred Frith continues to be one of the most important composer/performers of his generation—a groundbreaking, genre busting musical master whose work ranges from improvisation to rock, classical, folk and more. The third volume of his film soundtrack music is his most diverse and accomplished work to date, and includes studio work from the past six years. Features some of the greatest musicians in the Bay Area music scene.
The Fred Records Story Vol. 3 - Stepping Out
Third of a three box collection by one of the most innovative guitarists and composers of his generation, containing eight ReR CDs, a bonus Fred title and a fat historic booklet with artwork, photographs, extensive notes and other comments by Fred, all packed into in a sturdy box -- and at a budget price. Box three contains: Technology of Tears, Propaganda, Allies, Accidental, The Previous Evening, Happy End Problem, Nowhere, Sideshow, Field Days. Plus, bonus CD Inimitable (previously unreleased…
Woodwork / Live at Ateliers Claus
Fred Frith is one of the most important musicians of our time. He was born in Sussex, UK and now lives in California, USA. He first came to attention as one of the founding members of the English avant-rock group Henry Cow. He was and is also a member of groups like Massacre, Art Bears, Skeleton Crew and Cosa Brava. Over the past 40 years Frith has collaborated with outstanding musicians like John Zorn, Tom Cora, Bill Laswell, Carla Kihlstedt, Henry Kaiser, Phil Minton, Brian Eno, The Residents,…
Live in Moscow, Prague & Washington
72 minutes consisting of the whole of a 1978 Prague concert, a cause celebre at the time, (audibly) dividing the 3500 public and provoking controversy for some years after; a snippet from Washington, and the whole of a Moscow concert 10 years later (May '89).This is improvised music that refuses to fit into the usual categories of improvisation, as well as being technically and formally provocative.
Field Days (The Amanda Loops)
14 pieces originally written for dance and other practical situations, here reassigned and reconstructed for choreographer Amanda Miller and the Nederland Dans Theater. These are loop-based, textural, mood pieces, and invocations of spaces and landscapes, with some fine steel guitar playing. Mostly this is Fred multi-instrumenting, with pianist Daan Vanderwalle, percussionist Willie Wynant, the Arte Sax quartet and Lotte Anker, the Arditti Quartet, Kiku Day, occasional shakuhachi, and vio…
Propaganda
Written for theatre in 1987 using a host of avian and mammalian voices, snippets of unidentified musical material and electroacoustic noise- sculpting, as well as invented and real instruments played by Fred Frith. This was a hard time and the mood is intense, lean and not cheerful, though there are some gruesomely cheery inserts. There's no fat but a lot of meat here.
Impur
"In 1996, at the end of a two year residency, Fred organised an event at L'Ecole Nationale de Musique de Villeurbanne in France. He roped in as many of the students as he could, grouped according to their departments (early music, rock, African drumming, classical &c), and set them up in all the rooms in the building. The public wandered around creating their own mix, or sat in the courtyard listening to the sound drifting out through the open windows.
For their part, each group of musici…
Nowhere Sideshow Thin Air
This is Frith's sixth CD of music for dance, featuring three commissions by three different choreographers each sharing, as Fred says ' a certain obsession with melodic deconstruction.' Two of them feature - and were especially written for - the remarkable violinist Carla Kihlstedt.
Fred and Carla perform one of them (Fred playing a huge array of instruments here as on all pieces), are joined by Fred Guiliano, (samples) and Gail Brand (trombone) on another, while the third features Fred, …
Gravity
Former Henry Cow guitarist Fred Frith pays homage to three giants of contemporary classical music: John Cage, Morton Feldman and Earle Brown. In his own inimitable fashion, Frith has tried to incorporate the chosen composer's own working methods into each of the three pieces that make up The Previous Evening. As he explains in the enclosed booklet regarding his John Cage homage: 'Fragments of text heard in Part 1 were taken at random from Cage's book Silence. Tape editing, the structure of the e…
That House We Lived In
It was a long wait, but, 12 years after the fact, Fred Frith put together a live album of his group Keep the Dog, which had previously gone undocumented. Comprised of sax/flute player Jean Derome, guitarist René Lussier, keyboardist/harpist Zeena Parkins, sampling artist Bob Ostertag, and drummer Charles Hayward, Keep the Dog was formed by Frith in 1989 to perform a best-of repertoire of his career and remained his last rock group. By the time of this 1991 European tour, the unit had grown beyon…
Middle of the Moment
Continuing the definitive Fred Frith edition, this is the CD based on Fred’s music for the second film he made with Humbert and Penzel – following nomads – that features, along with Fred’s compositions and re-workings, a restless and gripping unfolding of atmospheric locations, tuareg and other musics, ethongraphic material and times captured. A collage or a soundwork rather than a straightforwardly musical composition, this is a serious and unfairly marginalised piece (because it falls between …
Prints - Snapshots, Postcards, Messages And Miniatures 1987-2001
The short story: Prints is Fred Frith's first album of songs in 20 years. The long story: it is actually a collection of compilation tracks and unreleased studio sessions recorded between 1987 and 2001. No matter if you already own a few of these, a pop album by this man is a rarity -- and that is truly a shame. Of course, as a respected improviser, serious composer, and educator, anything lighter from this pillar of modern music will meet with severe criticism from people who take themse…
Accidental
Fred Frith has been heard in all possible contexts, from solo improviser to composer of orchestral music, but he remains at his best when trapped in a studio, alone or with a few musicians, building layered pieces. This process previously yielded stunning albums such as the delicate Middle of the Moment or the avant rocking Speechless. Accidental features Frith performing all instruments and voices, mostly guitars, violin, junk percussion, and random radio tuning. This music was commissioned by …
The Previous Evening
Former Henry Cow guitarist Fred Frith pays homage to three giants of contemporary classical music: John Cage, Morton Feldman and Earle Brown. In his own inimitable fashion, Frith has tried to incorporate the chosen composer's own working methods into each of the three pieces that make up The Previous Evening. As he explains in the enclosed booklet regarding his John Cage homage: 'Fragments of text heard in Part 1 were taken at random from Cage's book Silence. Tape editing, the structure of the e…