Two Great Guitar Albums: Marc Ribot, Fred Frith
Marc Ribot and Fred Frith are similar guitarists in that they dabble in both austere minimalism (see Marc Ribot’s “Exercises in Futility” – Tzadik, 2008) and frenzied, choppy chaos (see Fred Frith’s work with Bill Laswell and This Heat drummer Charles Hayward in the group Massacre – esp. “Funny Valentine” – also on Tzadik, 1998) and apply a fearlessly experimental approach to both. Recent albums by each explore vastly contrasting territories, but are both really rather good.
Marc Ribot’s Ceramic Dog – Party Intellectuals
(Pi Recordings, 2008)
Marc Ribot’s Ceramic Dog (“not a ‘project’; a real band”, their myspace proclaims) occupies a strange place between a sort of vapid insouciance and blistering intensity, but i think this tension is a large part of what makes it work. Any contrived notion of cynical detachment is constantly being usurped by an inadvertent joie de vivre, or moments of intense poignancy. Tracks like ‘Todo El Mundo Es Kitsch’ live up to their name, but on ‘Pinch’, a by-numbers disco romp gets annihilated by one of the most coruscating guitar solos i’ve heard about two minutes in. ‘Digital Handshake’ rides atop a squarewave synth bassline, collapses into close to three minutes of twiddly noise before it plows back into the original groove with emphatic vigour. The title track is, oddly enough, pretty much guitar free; instead a deranged synth groove and a zombie-like rallying cry of ‘PARTYPARTYPARTYPARTY’ makes it closer to a more demented Devo or Brainiac.
Interestingly, it is the more subdued tracks that actually hit harder; ‘When We Were Young And We Were Freaks’ skates on thin ice for a while, with a token downcast riff and a stoned-sounding spoken-word drawl, but some incredible free drumming and noise guitar, and an obstinate refusal to ever settle into any form of groove, makes it genuinely soul-crushing, and as unhinged as any of the heavier tracks.
‘Bateau’ has a somber grace to it as well, which is quite rudely punctuated by harsh metallic guitar tones towards the end. “ShShSh” adheres to a similar template, with a stunning guitar piece contending with field recordings that sound like some sort of phantom transmission.
I suppose that this inconsistency, and the apparent contradictions contained on an album like this, could be considered a weakness, but it is precisely for this reason that i love this album.
When We Were young and We Were Freaks (extract)
(Tzadik, 2008)
Fred Frith’s ‘To Sail, To Sail’ is a much more focused affair, dedicated to exploring the textural range of the acoustic guitar, and extending that range through all manner of preparations. The economy of his means are truly staggering: bowed strings, constantly being tuned up and down, cause overtonal havoc on ‘Weather Gauge’, while the skitter of a crocodile clip against the strings in ‘First Light’ becomes a microrhythmic centre for the piece. The astonishing ‘Dog Watch’ is grounded by a rhythmic scrape, which gets enveloped by drones (either from e-bowed strings or acoustic feedback, i can’t be too sure) which trace out mournful semi-melodies through downtuning, before the piece culminates in a relentless percussive attack. Elsewhere, a Fahey-ish minimalism, and the dulcimer-like attack of the prepared guitar makes for an album on which the ingenuity of its approach is matched only by it’s lyricism.
(I was not given permission to post extracts from this album but you can stream clips from it here)
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