L’eclettico e ineffabile Frith disegna qui una striscia sonora – consigliabile a chi ne segue le gesta da sempre ma anche a chi volesse prendere confidenza con la sua arte – che appare quasi come una sorta di guida all’ascolto dell’ex Henry Cow e di mille altre cose. Emerge in particolare lo spirito degli storici Massacre, dai quali il nuovo trio eredita tensioni ed energia propulsiva. I due partner di Frith si mostrano all’altezza del compito, fornendo adeguato sostegno ritmico, imbastendo trame sottili, o robuste e gagliarde. Ragguardevole è Hoopes, che mostra di aver messo a profitto l’insegnamento di Pastorius con un suono turgido e pastoso al tempo stesso. I tre si trovano a meraviglia e danno luogo a una sequenza sonora che oscilla tra piglio rock, atmosfere astratte, grande coralità, solitarie fughe chitarristiche, senza soluzione di continuità, da viaggi astrali a indagini sulla materia elettroacustica per giungere alla free form integrale. Una nota di merito per il titolo dell’album, che brilla di luce propria con un’espressione mirabilmente in equilibrio tra imprecazione very cool e bestemmia tout court, forse uno scampolo dei borborigmi cui si lascia andare Frith in Poor Folly.
Fucile

https://www.musicajazz.it/fred-frith-another-day-paradise/

英国のギタリスト、フレッド・ フリス最新作。彼はインタク トから11枚ものアルバムを 出しています。

Ma chi lo ferma Fred Frith? Ha un'età che gli permetterebbe panchina, giornale e giardinaggio, e invece eccolo qui, sempre più presente e divertito in avventure radicali che fanno saltare per aria tutti i dadi stretti del jazz e del rock. Questo ad esempio è un «power trio>> elettrico che agisce sull'improvvisazione in cui la sua chitarra cerca e trova misteriose, spettrali, a volte palpitanti assonanze con la psichedelia d'antan che ascoltava all'Ufo Club quando sul palco c'era Syd Barrett.

Exploratory British guitarist Fred Frith's career is one of constant motion. Forays around the globe and across his fretboard produce a uniquely improvisational music with no loss of aesthetic for the emoting. Collaborations with a peerless cadre including Anthony Braxton, Derek Bailey, John Zorn, Chris Cutler, Bill Laswell, Evan Parker, Han Bennink, Ikue Mori and ensembles Henry Cow, Skeleton Crew, Naked City, Material, the Golden Palominos and Massacre saw his legend flourish over a period encompassing nearly 50 years.

On Another Day in **** Paradise, Frith's trio with Jason Hoopes (basses) and Jordan Glenn (drums/ percussion) brings dark, heavy textures reminiscent of the Downtown scene in which the guitarist thrived. Streams of feedback dance through arching, valley- wide guitar lines at once dissonant and gorgeous. The album opens with "The Origin of Marvels", a brief piece featuring Glenn's orchestral chimes, bells and clay pots against Frith's ECM-esque volume pedal phrases. The album is a study in conflict: near-gentle melodies alternate with raceways of raucousness. Frith spares little when searching for the right sound, including use of vocalized cries and neologisms. Most of the pieces are short with the central work, "Yard With Lunatics", as the standout epic. Throughout, Glenn fleetingly rolls over a drumset that includes brake drums and small percussives, responding to and rephrasing even the subtlest nuances before him while Hoopes' role, thrusting, guttural and deeply effective, often recalls Jah Wobble more than Jamaaladeen Tacuma. This is a trio fans of Frith will devour soundly.

Le rock manque-t-il à Fred Frith? A lire le titre bien bien punk de son nouveau disque, on se demande... Rappel rapide de la biographie du (essentiellement) guitariste : membre fondateur du groupe de rock-prog anglais Henry Cow qui hissa la chaussette au rang d'oeuvre totale Sur ses couvertures d'album, Fred Frith dérive après les années 70 et la rupture du band vers des scènes encore plus improvisées, encore plus underground, encore plus radicales. D'où sa présence continue depuis un tas de berges sur Intakt, label qui sait héberger tous ces itinéraires mal dégrossis pour l'industrie, sachant faire du bien pour le reste : d'ailleurs, Barry Guy viendrait lui plutôt de lamusique baroque, c'est dire.
Mais en fait, le rock manque sans doute à Fred Frith. Son power trio bien à lui (Jason Hoopes aux basses, Jordan Glenn aux percussions et batterie) s'empare d'unemusique qui emprunte beaucoup à un vocabulaire croisant quelque part entre Pink Floyd (avec qui a joué Fred Frith, avant qu'ils ne le deviennent) et Sonny Sharrock, un travail sur les textures et le son qui donne envie de passer un coup de bigot à Jim Jarmusch pour qu'il tourne Dead Man 2, Frith remplace Neil Young. Tout cela mélangé avec l'intérêt radical et toujours aussi intransigeant du guitariste anglais pour lesmusiques non-idiomatiques, par le biais desquels il insère des déséquilibres aux potentialités lyriques (''Yard with Lunatics''), énergiques (''The Deserted Garden') '', presque électro dans l'usage du schred), spectrales, infinies quoi !
Une impression de boucle bouclée se dégage de cet album lorsqu'on s'est un brin penché sur la carrière de Frith, mais une boucle ouverte sur quelque chose comme de lamusique. Une spirale, si vous voulez. Comme souvent avec les albums de Fred Frith, la vie intérieure de l'album est parfois trop laissée à sa propre économie (je me comprends) et lasse par endroits, retenant essentiellement les manies et le figement dans l'ensemble de ce que cesmusiques ''improvisées'' peuvent offrir. Pour le reste, des vrais bijoux bijoux, de vrais morceaux d'absolu kiff, et l'intransigeance d'unemusique qui en toute simplicité reste fidèle à son salutaire mouvement.

http://www.djamlarevue.com/blog/2016/9/20/fred-frith-trio-another-day-in-****-paradise?rq=intakt

Evocative and disturbing, the Fred Frith Trio’s Another Day in **** Paradise may just be one of the weirder and most arresting albums of the year. Joining Frith are bassist Jason Hoopes – who alternates between electric and acoustic – and drummer Jordan Glenn, whose kit wonderfully sounds as if half of it is built from toys and found objects. This album is all about sound, mood, texture, ideas, and atmosphere: demented church bells over distant guitar wails; tumbling kit and static guitar crunch punctuated by acoustic bass interjections; arco bass alongside Frith’s piercing Morton Subotnik impersonations; fuzzy slabs; his spoken nonsense syllables; long echoes reverberating across anxious and restless drums; quiet squeals and clacks behind long guitar swells mirroring the shape and direction of whale song. It is a sonic and affective world with the power to raise goosebumps.

To create this surreal soundscape the trio often returns to many of the same devices and vocabulary, but they twists and reconfigure them in new ways to fashion something fresh each time. Several tracks segue together (tracks two through six form a kind of mini-suite) and the group shifts gears quite quickly, which makes for a very quick and engaging listen. When Frith et al decide to change direction there is no hedging or tip-toeing – transitions are made assertively and roles are settled into at once, allowing for immediate discovery and invention.

Frith, Hoopes, and Glenn’s take on paradise is dark, and sounds akin to a seedy underworld out of a China Miéville novel, or perhaps the soundtrack to deleted Blade Runner scenes that were too twisted to use. Regardless of the inspiration, it’s nowhere I’d like to visit in person. But I will gladly take my ears there any time.

https://www.pointofdeparture.org/PoD56/PoD56MoreMoments3.html

Pilier du label Intakt, et Suisse d’adoption depuis des années, le guitariste anglais Fred Frith est, et reste, un musicien inclassable qui fréquente des musiciens de tous styles, se déplaçant sur l’échiquier musical à la manière d’un fou, atterrissant toujours dans la case où on ne l’attend pas. Avec le bassiste Jason Hoopes et le batteur Jordan Glenn, il renoue avec le rock de ses débuts, mais sans répétition, sinon peut-être un peu de nostalgie. Non seulement la musique, forte et dure, de Frith n’a rien à craindre des jeunes musiciens noise qui travaillent dans des domaines post jazz-rock, mais on a toujours l’impression qu’il leur montre la voie. Plein de rebondissements même si parfois assourdissant à mon goût

https://www.culturejazz.fr/spip.php?article3004

Improviser and multi-instrumentalist Fred Frith has released music nearly every year since the early '70s. Through countless collaborations, solo albums, soundtracks and more, he has continually kept his listeners, and fellow musicians, at the edges of their seats. His new album, Another Day In **** Paradise, is no exception.

Each member of this trio-Frith on guitar, Jason Hoopes on bass and Jordan Glenn on drums-adds sounds, layers and textures to the often- dense improvisational soundscapes. But the sound design is so clear and vivid that listeners will be able to easily distinguish individual voices. Though complex and multifaceted, the music never veers toward excess.

Listeners will have no trouble staying grounded in the sonic mix. But this album is no easy listening. Musically, there's a lot going on. The way it pushes the listener toward the brink of sensory overload is exciting-the ears learn to adapt and function in an uncommon way. Not for the faint of heart, Another Day In **** Paradise will leave its listeners tripped out and travel-weary, but ultimately in a better place.

In seinem kalifornischen Gitarre- Bass-Schlagzeug- Trio ist alles möglich, der englische Aussenseiter zwischen Jazz und Rock überrascht hier endlich mal wieder mit einer absolut wilden Gitarre und seiner genialen Verspieltheit. Das weckt beste Erinnerungen an Frith Musik der frühen Achtziger auf S Ralph Records. Die zehn neuen Stücke sind als durchgehender Wall of Sound angelegt und bieten dabei dem Trio viel Raum für abenteuerliche, vibrierende Improvisationen. Fred Frith selbst sagt dazu: „It's a bloody great feeling". Stimmt definitiv!

Frith remains the most splendidly bloody-minded of innovators. Another Day..., perhaps thankfully, has little to do with Phil Collins, but it does summon some of Frith's rock roots: essentially this is a power trio set loose in a free, irreverent, go-for-it context. There's the edge of Lifetime and the madness of Syd Barrett: indeed, there's more Pink Floyd here than in the Salvodelli/ Casarano/Bardoscia release reviewed elsewhere in these august pages. Yeah, there are longeurs: even the best artists disappear up their own musical arch sometimes. But at barely 50 minutes for 13 songs, Frith is a wise enough cove not to overstay his welcome. That said, 'Yard with Lunatics' is 11 minutes plus of paint-stripping intensity. As this is also Frith's touring band, many of these themes were already road tested so even at their most in-the-moment creative, this trio remain ski-pant tight. Or just pants if yawing guitar sonics ain't your thang. In which case you're missing out.

Ever the iconoclast, Fred Frith has broken every rule in the playbook of the guitarist. He doesn’t spare ‘the horses’ on Another Day in **** Paradise. Adding vocals to his murderous stabs of the guitar, Frith’s aural topography takes on a unique, dark visual dimension approaching at times, the quintessence of Germanic expressionism reminiscent of the insane hypnotist in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. It is, however, not unlike Fred Frith to busk every trend. The reality is that no trend can confine Frith as he makes simple yet intricate music that affirms the supremacy of the electric guitar both by itself and in combination with a double bass/electric bass and an ample array of drums and percussion instruments played by the equally virtuosic Jason Hoopes and Jordan Glenn respectively.

This programme features varied, arresting, original music by Frith. Arranged by mysterious happenstance on this disc Another Day in **** Paradise is a mesmerising, dazzling, often momentous almost hour-long slice of life in an urban landscape through which the composer’s own sounds seem fated for sublimation into a digital cloud. Frith’s ‘Only Light and Shadow’ epitomises that expressionist 1920 film by Robert Wiene as the song creates a world of levitation, reanimation and even death so vivid that the sounds the instruments make assume personalities as if they were characters depicted in that sinister film. However ‘The Sleep of Reason’ scored for manic dystopia suddenly turns almost endearingly both fanciful and romantic. And in ‘Phantoms of Progress’ screeches and keening wail might be heard in the daring contrasts in energy levels between the music’s continuous sections.

‘The Ride Home’, which comes right after ‘Phantoms…’ is a highly persuasive ghost-addicted bluesy riff just 1 minute 46 seconds long with some wonderful playing by the trio haunted by insinuating, expressive angularity. Throughout the performance guitar, bass and drums is an attractively dense block of sound making its somnambulant way towards a blurred yet radiant light. The crack, idiomatic performances bode well for a possible follow-up to this insightful presentation for three extravagantly creative musicians employed in making music like we’ve never heard before.

https://jazzdagama.com/music/fred-frith-trio-another-day-****-paradise/

The album title may equate to what a disgruntled co-worker may utter at the office on a Monday morning. Yes, some of us have used this line, but master improviser, guitarist Fred Frith's prowess and boundless creativity is the antithesis to anything that may cause a semblance of drudgery.

Jason Hoopes' bursting e-bass lines and Jordan Glenn's vigorous drumming and colorful accents supply all the ammo Frith needs via his speed riffing, unearthly effects and keen use of volume control techniques that are deviously entertaining amid ethereal sound-shaping paradigms throughout. On "Glimmers of Goodbyes," Glenn's crashing cymbals, rumbling rolls and Hoopes' looping and fractured notes generate a spiky backdrop for Frith's menacing chord voicings, framed with angst and a pleasantly ominous sequence of events. However, the guitarist sounds like he's in a time warp with ambient textures riding above his associates asymmetrical grooves during "Yard with Lunatics."

Their enthusiasm keeps boiling over on "Only Light and Shadow," where Frith's avant rock extrapolations and irksome distortion-based treatments elicit a vibe that could signal a precursor to a catastrophic world event. Needless to state, the trio possesses a huge arsenal of tricks. But the leader's peculiar, short-circuit type effects are shrewdly contrasted by Hoopes' fervent arco-bass lines on "Schlechtes Gewissen."

Other than Frith's extensive body of work, hearkening back to the fabled Henry Cow years, fans of the highly charged experimental trio Massacre should welcome this set with open arms. Paradise is not always about timeless harmony, as Frith and company prove that notion rather poignantly on this hardcore off-centered delicacy.

https://www.allaboutjazz.com/another-day-in-****-paradise-fred-frith-intakt-records-review-by-glenn-astarita

By way of a contrast to the hyper-detailed improv Frith concocts with MMM associates Alvin Curran, Joëlle Léandre, and Urs Leimgruber on Oakland/Lisboa, his own trio’s Another Day in **** Paradise (Intakt) is a concentrated, time-stretched take on power trioism.

It’s a 49 minute, 11 track studio album recorded in Oakland, in January 2016, with Frith in the company of electric bassist Jason Hoopes and drummer Jordan Glenn, both mainstays of the music scene around Frith’s adopted home in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Frith describes the trio’s MO as unpremeditated, saying that its musical themes emerged only after an intensive tour of Europe, during which: “I appeared to be channeling some of my earliest rock and roll experiences – jamming with members of Pink Fairies in 1969, a couple of sad weeks in a band with Syd Barrett.” He goes on to tip practically every inventive guitarist of the era, from Macca to Sonny Sharrock, as influential.

With this trio, Frith says: “Anything can happen. Really. It’s a bloody great feeling,” but given such ebullience and the album’s sassy title its material cohesion and restraint may be unexpected.

Each piece segues into the next, so the album plays as a single piece with variegated movements, and packs in plenty of Frith’s powerful, complex and painterly fretwork.

From the tolling bells that introduce “The Origin of Marvels” to the lead bass and guitar-stippled clattering percussion of “Dance of Delusion” and Frith’s first liquid fire lead solo, to his muttered vocal on the spaced-out proto-chant “Poor Folly” and the funked-up industrial minimalism of “La Tempesta”, the album’s opening moments slip and segue from vibe to vibe, defying the ear to pin anything down.

This run slips into abstraction on “Glimmers of Goodbyes”, with Frith casting an FX shimmer over a bass/drum workout reminiscent of Raoul Bjorkenheim’s Scorch Trio, and then surges into “Yard with Lunatics” – at 11:31, the album’s longest track by over 5 minutes.

The initial overspill then dissipates into a stretch where there’s more space for Frith to unspool long, layered sustains as a canvas for more gestural splashes of colour. With no way-markers for guidance Hoopes and Glenn could sink into the alluvium, but they stay attuned and the bassist takes up the melodic lead then doubles up on contrabass to keep the pulse of the music alive.

“Only Light and Shadow” sees Frith amping up the effects and peeling off some taut lead lines. His partners initially seem more restless, but their heightened tension slips into “The Sleep of Reason”, and a zone of lulling bell-chimes -the closest the trio come to Frith’s electro-acoustic trio Death Ambient.

Hoopes’ Contrabass is a steady, luminous presence amid percussive agitation and raw electrical noise on “Straw Men”, but “The Deserted Garden” and “Schlechtes Gewissen” bring late flowerings of turbulence and friction, with a lovely Fripp-esque tonality sweetening the former, and variegated tones of friable volatility synthesised to accompany sweaty bowed bass and taut frame drumming on the latter.

As the multi-tracked progressive improv of “Phantoms of Progress” slowly dissolves into washes of guitar synth the trio’s pulse seems to weaken, but it’s just a feint: outro “The Ride Home” is bass-sprung, and whisked briskly along by Glenn’s brushed snare with Frith free, as ever, to conjure his extraordinary richly-textured and multi-layered guitar parts.

https://dalstonsound.wordpress.com/2016/08/11/fred-frith-trio-another-day-in-****-paradise/

«**** of a laboratory !» – Accidenti di un laboratorio, si direbbe – quello imbastito senza troppi preamboli da un sempre più tonico Fred Frith con una coppia di strumentisti di notorietà sulle prime pallida rispetto allo stagionato leader, con il quale però cospirano alacremente in un’offensiva d’idee in cui non si risparmiano ardimenti tattici, e apparentemente senza alcuna soggezione carismatica, spendendosi pressoché tutti alla pari.

Inesorabile il pressing percussivo di Jordan Glenn, pronto come tutti a sovvertire regole e ruoli della sezione ritmica, in parte co-imbastita dalla forte corrente a note basse di Jason Hoopes, peraltro spiccatamente edotto sulle varie incarnazioni del proprio strumento, capace di citazioni, tra cui quella, radicale, di Pastorius, comunque piegandole ad energie di più deviante traiettoria. Partner, entrambi, spiccatamente dotati nell’intessere frames di grande dinamicità evolutiva, concedendo un ampio margine attoriale al leader, dilagante nell’invenzione e nelle proprie esposizioni strumentali, ora ruggenti ora sideralmente remote, ora crudamente chitarristiche ora di possanza orchestrale quando non meta-strumentale.

Grande e sentita riscossa insomma per il grande Frith, che nelle riepilogative note ci rammenta in forma di panoramica l’ampio ventaglio di personalità influenti nelle sua formazione chitarristica: da Pete Townsend a David Gilmour, da John McLaughlin all’affine Daevid Allen (accennando ad una brevissima militanza nella band del tormentato Syd Barrett) – ma qui esplicitando quanto egli ne abbia da tempo trasceso il dettato, diffondendo la propria, personale ed eclettica visione.

Vivacizzato dal titolo “rated” e dall’attrattiva copertina, l’album segna un avanzamento formale per l’abitualmente sobria (ma non per questo compassata) Intakt records,che nell’ultimo decennio del grande chitarrista ha già fornito una notevole successione d’incisioni regolarmente, ma che di fatto esprimono una “coda” (sia pure eccellente) all’impressionante mole espressiva del nostro.

Nemmeno troppo estrosamente l’album, oltre a prestarsi a molteplici e fruttiferi riascolti, potrebbe fungere non tanto da «A Young Person’s Guide to» Fred Frith (rappresentandolo creativamente soltanto in parte) quanto essere additato ad istantanea delle contemporanee tensioni nell’ambito del jazz-rock più propriamente da intendere e, naturalmente, quanto di più esemplare possa riscontrarsi in materia di creativa propensione al rischio esponendo una vivace sintesi tra stratificazione storica e gioco d’anticipo.

https://www.jazzconvention.net/2016/07/29/fred-frith-trio-another-day-in-****-paradise/