Track listing: Time Comes Presto; A Beautiful Thing To Forget/Far ej Tackas; Look At Shy Go; Dog-Eared; I Am Buffalo Bill Today; Initially This; Postcard From The Back; I Am Map; Abstract Expressionism; Dream As A Means; Aller Retour; Time Goes Largo.
Personnel: Fred Frith: acoustic guitar, lowry organ, violin (4); Carla Kihlstedt: violin, nyckelharpa; Stevie Wishart: hurdy-gurdy, electronics, violin (4).
"The music on this record is improvised. What we bring to each performance is who we are and all that we have learned so far. None of us is involved exclusively with improvisation. We each have experience playing composed music our own and other peoples' - and we're involved in a wide range of other musical activities. We write songs, use electronics, work in recording studios, collaborate with artists from other disciplines, compose scores, and much else besides. For us, improvising is the sum of our personal musical histories intertwined, a place where we can meet on equal terms and discover things we never knew, or hear what we thought we knew in a new light. It's a conversation, an exchange. There are no rules, other than to listen well and act accordingly."-Fred Frith, 2005, Liner Notes. "For one of Fred Frith's strengths has always been to tie together unbelievably beautiful folk harmonies with free improvisation, something already heard in his band Skeleton Crew or in the soundtrack to the film Step Across the Border. This is also a strength of this trio."-Intakt. Cover art by Carla Kihlstedt
In the course of guitarist/composer and consummate improviser Fred Frith’s extensive discography, many of us have grown accustomed to being sensitized for expecting the unforeseen. With this release, recorded at a studio in Oakland, California, the trio casts a homespun edge to avant garde stylizations. Violinist Carla Kihlstedt also uses a Swedish folk instrument known as the nyckelharpa. Electronics artist Stevie Wishart boosts the session with a hurdy-gurdy, which is a string instrument that uses a rosined wheel in lieu of a bow. Frith’s improvised jazz/folk permutations steer the proceedings into an organic gala with a bevy of abstracts and roots-derived melodies. The trio generates an intimate alliance of sorts, complete with chamber-like passages and nimbly transmitted harmonic developments. And the band’s nouveau vibe complements its sense of antiquity during these twelve mesmerizing works. Moreover, Wishart’s subliminal effects-based treatments provide a mark of detection that looms as a time stamp for future generations. It substantiates the modernism, yet counterbalances the musicians’ very artistic manner of integrating a historically-minded muse into their music.
Recommended listening.
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