Fred Frith
Speechless

Fred Frith is probably among the greatest guitarists remembered.

Eclectic, prolific, original, his contribution to rock and avant-garde music is at least significant. His influence is evident when one thinks of the more than 400 recordings in which he appears as a soloist, band member, collaborator, or producer.

But let's go in order: Fred Frith was born in England in 1949 where he grew up on bread and music, learned to play the violin, and later switched to the guitar; by the age of fifteen, he had a little group with which he started experimenting with the first blues. But it was at university, in Cambridge, that his style refined, absorbing styles and cultures and becoming fascinated by John Cage's musical philosophy and uncle Frank Zappa's sound manipulations. It is here that he met Tim Hodgkinson with whom he founded the great Henry Cow, revitalizers of the Canterbury scene, brainy and irreverent in their improvisations as much as they were influential, often venturing off the beaten path into avant-garde music (the tough one, eh!). During this period, he also began producing his first solo albums like “Guitar Solos,” with his very personal approach to the instrument, acclaimed by many guitarists. Among the many collaborators he worked with in England were Robert Wyatt and Brian Eno, who had a very keen ear and didn't let him slip away, recruiting him to play on “Before and After Science” and “Music for Films.”

After the breakup of Henry Cow, he moved to New York, where he continued to record solo albums and collaborate with exceptional artists, influenced by the avant-garde scene there. Among the numerous collaborations, those with Zeena Parkins, John Zorn (he plays the bass in Naked City) and the legendary Residents must be mentioned.

The happiest result of these years of creativity is “Speechless,” aptly named, a surreal collage of life and people in New York, worthy of the most absurd experiments by the Residents and Frank Zappa's playful collage. Listening to this music transports you to the streets of Brooklyn or Central Park or the dirtiest alleys of Harlem; the guitar is the protagonist even if rarely recognizable in its thousand transformations, sometimes imitating natural or artificial sounds, other times noises; it is almost a narrating voice, the common thread of these metropolitan frescoes. All this is immersed in a realistic, almost tangible environment, sometimes achieved through recordings of voices and environmental sounds, other times evoked by instruments, even if they do not aim to reproduce real noises, but rather to evoke the idea of a situation, often distorted by electronic effects. Frith uses a large number of musical instruments, which makes everything more disorienting, including xylophone, vibraphone, flute, accordion and harmonium, Jews harp and violin, which he plays on some occasions. To all this is added the endless mix of genres that flow and blend and often varies several times within each song, ranging from the Canterbury progressive of the same Henry Cow to the most experimental avant-garde and vaudeville, from blues to jazz, from Residents to Faust, from Frank Zappa to Brian Eno, but everything is made more human (or inhuman) by the various samples of voices, murmurs, shouts and laments, sometimes reminiscent of Moondog's concerts on 52nd Street.

Highly recommended album then, even to start getting to know this phenomenal artist. Obviously, it's impossible to predict what will happen in each song, each track surprises, and the listening is not particularly difficult, in short, it's like living New York City in a record.