Simon Frick, Solo

To my knowledge I have never had the pleasure of hearing violinist Simon Frick before. He is an extremely adroit virtuoso with apparently considerable classical training. He puts that schooling into very distinctive use in a solo violin album that makes of the violin a rock vehicle.

Solo (Boomslang) begins with a most unusual version of Nirvana's anthem "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and goes on from there with a series of very metallic solo violin pieces, making excellent use of effects and it seems double-tracking to give us a powerful jolt.

Beneath it all are real virtuoso abilities. Much of the music has a cadenza-like quality but also a driving hard-rock heft. Not since Jerry Goodman's work with the Flock has so much violin gone into a rock setting. And here as a solo violin effort the virtuosity and the heavy aspects join together as a unified single-source power thrust.

There are clearly improvisational elements as well as worked-over compositional routines on display. And the whole thing works together to give you an iconoclastic, genre-bursting wholeness that is most impressive.

If you come out of the rock side, you will be flabbergasted. If you come out of the classical side you may be shocked. If you have been musically exposed to both camps you will not feel that this is a shotgun marriage of styles. It works so well because Frick stays true to the rootedness of his violin heritage as well as the hard-rock world he so successfully engages.

It is a real ear-opener! Maybe even an era-opener! You will undeniably get something out of this music wherever you come from. He is an artist, truly, an innovator, and a creative force that needs to be heard.

Scott Walker, Bish Bosch

Good heavens! Wikipedia tells me that Bisch Bosh (4AD) is singer-conceptual musician Scott Walker's 14th studio album. Really? I must have been in a pod-freezer someplace because I've missed them! It does help explain the full-blown maturity and well-developed personal originality that you hear on this album.

He is creating an avant sort of electric soundscape rock that has no clear predecessors, except perhaps Beefheart, the father-son Buckleys (Tim and Jeff) at times. . . who else?

It has a lyrical content that is poetic art. The music is very creative and rather outside, mostly. His vocals are inimitable, slightly hysterionic but to a specific end. There is an almost chant-like quality in the vocals the way they lay out across the musical backdrop/foredrop.

I can't say there's anything like it going on out there today. Not everybody is going to find this to their taste--especially if they are not avant inclined. Those who are will probably take to this like I did.

Tabula rasa time in an age where the pages are disappearing to be replaced by pixels. Tabula pixata? Either way this one is something to hear!

Percy Howard's Meridiem in a Third Outing

Percy Howard and his Project Band Meridiem has two CDs out there, one from 1998, one from 2000. I have not yet heard them. However his third, A Pleasant Fiction, Meridiem Volume Three (Voiceprint/Pangea) has been grabbing my ears for a week. It is time to report in on it.

Percy gathers together a fairly large group of musicians for this current volume, most notably Vernon Reid, Bill Laswell and Buckethead. Percy Howard does most of the vocals and he has soul. I believe it is Jill Tracy that is also a vocalist here and she contrasts Percy well. There may be others vocalists appearing too, but I don't know and it doesn't matter, really.

What we have is a musical trip that circumnavigates all kinds of progressive, alt and metallic-fusion realms. There is a story line that threads its way throughout and it has a romantic flavor. It is the well-crafted and excellently performed songs that musically stand out. The ensemble is top notch, guitar work notable and everything gels in a way conducive to the ears of 2009. I am sometimes reminded of Kip Hanrahan's imagery of love on the hot griddle. This is in Percy's own bag, though.

The songs are sophisticated and complicated enough that a single hearing does not do them justice. (And I sometimes wonder what reviewers think they are doing when they react to a recording based on a single listen, if there are any out there who still do that. OK if you know the music more or less beforehand. Not OK for a virgin slab of music.) Repeated listening reveals the content and puts the songs firmly in the memory. They are the sort of things Carla Bley, Mike Mantler and others pioneered in the '70s, art-rock songs, if you will.

Anybody who wants something with a lot of thought and care put into it, who likes rock but doesn't like the more banal versions, who looks for the edgier forms, would do well to hear this CD at least two or three times, or ten. . . .