Henry Cow
Unrest
Virgin LP 1974

Henry Cow were a Cambridge band founded in 1968 by Frith and Tim Hodgkinson, who saw no contradiction between playing the blues, trying to write like Béla Bartók and performing Dada poetry. Their first two shows were opposite Pink Floyd. Eventually Henry Cow became an early signing to Richard Branson’s new Virgin Records, then based in London’s über-groovy Portobello Road. Their 1973 debut Legend saw them grasping eagerly at the awesome possibilities of the recording studio, but the following year’s Unrest is more polished and coherent. Jazzy saxophonist Geoff Leigh has left, and the horn section is now Hodgkinson’s alto, plus Lindsay Cooper’s eloquent bassoon, oboe and recorder. The first side is dominated by Frith’s increasingly confident writing: “Bittern Storm Over Ulm” is a welcoming avant-groove, while “Ruins” is 12 minutes of well sustained, post-Messiaen writing for rock group – a tour de force and perhaps Henry Cow’s finest moment. Meanwhile Frith’s “Solemn Music” is a tiny jewel, just one minute of oboe melody over electric guitar. Faced with neither proper rock nor proper jazz, Cow audiences were sometimes bewildered, but Pink Floyd fans could relate.

Fred Frith
Guitar Solos
Caroline LP 1974

In Cambridge Frith had a reputation for his solo acoustic guitar shows, featuring the raw fingerpicking of Davy Graham's “Angie” alongside blues and improvised, often humorous provocations. There’s a flavour of “Angie” about “Hello Music”, the cheerful opener of Frith’s solo debut Guitar Solos. Ray Smith’s glorious monochrome sleeve photo portrays the guitarist alone on a cricket field – yes it’s funny, but why exactly? The whole album is a delicately played and exotically coloured extravaganza, with a winking vein of humour running through it. It’s also an ambitious chunk of conceptual art, an attempt to redefine the electric guitar from the ground up. Double pickups, preparations on the strings and Frith’s new two-handed tapping techniques result in the galloping rhythms of an acid cowboy on “Out Of Their Heads (On Locoweed)” – the title a quote from Mad magazine’s beloved cartoonist Don Martin.

Fred Frith
Gravity
Ralph LP 1980

Frith discovered Europe by moving to New York. Henry Cow called it a day in 1978, and Gravity reeks of excitement at the diversity of the American city that was Frith’s new home. However, the first half was recorded in Sweden and Switzerland, and is an astonishingly propulsive suite of tunes steeped in east European dance. Frith’s violin locks into Eino Haapala’s mandolin, while accordions, drums and hand-clapping accelerate and lurch from one tune to another. Rhythms evolve and segue, never wanting to stop. Two musicians are credited with “whirling”. The whole thing has a feeling of a street festival – it’s certainly one of the most outdoor sounding things Frith has done. On Gravity’s first side Frith is backed by members of Swedish prog outfit Samla Mammas Manna, while on side two Paul Sears (drums) and Billy Swann (bass) of The Muffins bring an American directness to exhilarating rock grooves recorded in the US. A classic.

Naked City
Naked City
Nonesuch CD/LP 1990

In Frith’s new life in New York, John Zorn was a key collaborator, and between 1988–93 Frith played bass in Zorn’s turn-on-a-dime combo Naked City. Guitar duties were shouldered by Bill Frisell, virtuosic in a very different way to Frith, and it can be comic to hear the introverted sophisticate Frisell turning up to 11 and straining to make his blues licks fast and filthy enough for Zorn’s needs. Named for a 1945 book of photos by Weegee, the group’s 1990 debut Naked City features on the sleeve a dark Weegee crime snap of a body and a gun. 25 years later the music, stealing from allcomers and slick as a Mickey Spillane tale, still exhilarates. Zorn’s screaming alto urges us on to ever more manic highs. It’s another great New York album, though by now Zorn had moved on to live in Japan, where musical blossoms of hardcore were peeping out into a new spring.

Massacre
Meltdown
Tzadik CD 2001

As a guitarist, Frith tends to leave plenty of room for others, which makes Massacre an intriguing proposition: a power trio with Bill Laswell’s bass and Charles Hayward’s drums. How will the reluctant guitar hero deal with this much space? With relish and rangy flair, from the evidence of this live London date. Frith put Massacre together in 1980, volunteering to supply a support act for Peter Blegvad’s Valentine’s Day concert in New York. With Fred Maher on drums, they toured for a year and made one album, Killing Time. So this 2001 set, largely unedited from Robert Wyatt's Meltdown festival on London’s South Bank, is a reunion. The 25 minute “Figure Out” is a great pleasure: Frith carves up chunks of raw noise, sounding simultaneously like crushed metal boxes and yowling birds, later drifting into a gentle bedtime dreamland. Laswell switches from deep dub basslines into perky disco, and Hayward knows when to slip into half time – and when to whip out his melodica. Large scale power improv excitement.

Fred Frith
Middle Of The Moment
RecRec CD 1995

An example of Frith’s soundtrack work, but by no means a conventional soundtrack album. Middle Of The Moment is a 1995 film by Nicholas Humbert and Werner Penzel, who shot the Frith-stalking documentary Step Across The Border (1990). This time they they follow two sets of nomads: a Tuareg tribe in the Sahel, and an avant garde circus troupe, Cirque O, across Europe. The film itself is a cinepoem, and Frith’s album draws on a large stock of recorded sound, whether it was used in the film or not. Raw location sound blends into music; the winch winding gear of a well sings, animals and accordions both growl, Tim Hodgkinson’s luxuriously squealing clarinet collapses into the sound of Tuareg women drumming, whooping and chasing each other. In Frith’s words, “I ‘travelled’ through this material, formed my impressions, and created a ‘sound-movie’ from them, using a process analogous to that of editing a film.”

Fred Frith/Carla Kihlstedt/Stevie Wishart
The Compass, Log And Lead
Intakt CD 2006

Frith’s acoustic guitar resurfaces on this fine improvised release on the Swiss label Intakt. US violinist Carla Kihlstedt of Tin Hat Trio engages with Frith and the hurdygurdy of UK based Australian, Stevie Wishart. The mood is folksy but restrained, modest in a good way, and the communication between the three is excellent. Drones are frequent – the hurdy-gurdy loves to drone, and Kihlstedt brings a Swedish stringed nyckelharpa that feels likewise. Wishart had a long career leading a medieval ensemble, but these days is a successful composer. She has a nice quote on her website, a mission statement perhaps: “I have become fascinated with birdsong as a way to learn music and train my ears. Though very complex and nuanced, birdsong remains accessible and inclusive, whereas complex contemporary music can be much less so.” Frith himself has a longstanding interest in birdsong, and knowing this can shed light on aspects of his improvising.

Chris Cutler/Thomas Dimuzio/Fred Frith
Golden State
ReR Megacorp LP 2010

Frith has stayed in touch with old Cow buddies, in particular Tim Hodgkinson and drummer Chris Cutler. Here he teamed up with Cutler and Cutler's collaborator, the sampler wrangler and concrète noisemaker Thomas Dimuzio. These are live recordings from Californian concerts 1999–2002, released on glamorous limited edition white vinyl. The result is an uncompromisingly murky racket, and the nearest I’ve heard Frith approach the extreme psychedelia of Keiji Haino. Dimuzio gobbles everything into his real-time audio processor, and dark storms of audio filth roll across the stage like smoke. A brave Beth Custer joins the team on one piece (“Saturn”), on clarinet of all things, soon disappearing into the audio magma. The audience get rowdy, but not as rowdy as the music.

Fred Frith Trio with Lotte Anker & Susana Santos Silva
Road
Intakt 2xCD 2021

Since 2013 Frith has worked with his Bay area trio: Jason Hoopes (The Atomic Bomb Audition) on electric bass and Jordan Glenn (Weiner Kids) on drums. Road is their first live release, and has two CDs: first a concert from Stadthalle Köln as part of Week-End Fest 2019 (hence the “Lost Weekend” track titles). The mood is kick-ass and the energy levels high, and everything is improvised. For the second disc, also live, the trio is joined first by Susana Santos Silva, a Portuguese trumpeter based in Stockholm, and later by the powerful sax of Lotte Anker, a Danish musician who is co-leader of the 12-piece Copenhagen Art Ensemble. Frith moves fluently from hard scrabble improv to lyrical, tonal sections. Maybe the most interesting moments arrive when the guitarist seems to float off into a reverb-drenched dreamland and the group sound slightly lost. Will they find their way back?

Fred Frith
Fifty
Week-End 2xLP 2024

Now it's half a century since Guitar Solos, and Frith seems as busy as ever. For the golden jubilee reissue, Cologne based Week-End Records suggested recording a set of new material with the same set-up as in 1974. And so here is Fifty, the original album plus 13 concise new pieces in which Frith confronts his younger self and the sheer nerve of what he was attempting back then. This is a clever, confident record by an old master, if you like. One moment it’s pretty and melodic, the next gritty or microtonal, but nothing is overstated and much is delicate. “Quicksilver (For Simone)” is high speed tap and flutter, butterfly wings in a summer garden. “Jack’s Neap Tide” is melodic and ringing. Frith’s bird hobby is back, with “Phalaropes” sketching the scuttling of the titular shorebirds. The twin tracks “Dawns” and “Dusks” bookend the album, gently banging the strings of the horizontal guitar. Clearly Frith has always loved being in a recording studio, and he still loves doing what he does. This record glows with that love.

Read Clive Bell's interview with Fred Frith inside The Wire 479/480. Wire subscribers can also read the article online via the digital library of back issues.