Bill Frisell
Unspeakable

Bill Frisell is a cascade of music. You barely have time to fall in love with one of his albums when he's already released another. "Unspeakable", in fact, was published by Nonesuch Records towards the end of 2004 and is already the penultimate album of Frisell, given that his latest album, "Richter 858", has just hit the stores. Rarely does a musician succeed in combining quantity with quality. The eclectic Frisell manages this. The albums spawned by the bespectacled American guitarist are almost always of high quality and continually explore the boundaries of musical genres, without disappointing. On the contrary, Frisell’s music often surprises because it has the rare ability to continually innovate, yet always retains a distinctive imprint, identifiable in the musician's guitar style. A Frisell album is unmistakable. You recognize him, it’s him, and it leaves you breathless, in this case, speechless. I believe, in fact, that it is possible to say that we are facing one of his most beautiful works in recent years.

In the previous "The Intercontinentals", he had indulged in the influences of world music and before that had ventured between American blues and country, but in this work, just to catch us off guard, he changes the scene by offering an album rich in electronic influences and samples, blending together groove and funky with experimentation and research. For example, the opening track - "1968 Listen" - is characterized by continuous sampling upon which segments played by strings are inserted, providing a backdrop to the light, clean, spontaneous guitar evolutions. I challenge you then to remain still while listening to the basses, the horns, and the guitar of the second track, "White Fang", truly irresistible and above all modern. In the following pieces, there is room for further experiments, sometimes reflective, other times frantic or gritty. Melodies and dissonances come together, then drift apart, in an intertwining that only seems disordered at first glance because in the end, that guitar always comes to show you the way, like Ariadne's thread to escape the labyrinth. Furthermore, there are moments when it seems like you're listening to music fit for a multitude of people on the street on a sunny day, then suddenly you find yourself alone in a restless sleep, only to end up being lulled by magical, intimate nighttime settings. But at every moment, the sensation of listening to something new remains alive, even though none of the elements in play are new in themselves.

Frisell's guitar in this album is like a needle that loves to weave threads of different colors, to sew together rich fabrics with simple ones, ultimately presenting us with a strange, colorful tapestry that never ceases to be admired. I can’t wait to hear "Richter 858".