Traffic Continues

Traffic Continues

ASIN: B00003GPFL

Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
It's axiomatic in many contemporary music circles that post-60s free improvisation and New Music composition share many facets, not the least of which are the parallel studies in how tones and overtones can interact and how musical space can be used to better highlight textural matters. With Traffic Continues, guitarist and composer Fred Frith has carried the study of the New Music and out-jazz crossroads to new heights. He's enlisted, for the first segment of the two-part piece, Europe's Ensemble Moderne, picking up their catalog-deep knowledge of contemporary composition and sending them headlong through improvised passages that chatter and squiggle and pulse with brassy energy all the while. For the second installment of Traffic, Frith has added harpist Zeena Parkins and drum machinist Ikue Mori to the ensemble. Together, they pay homage to the late cellist Tom Cora and make a scrabbling go of it. The music wafts and explodes, grinds and soothes, juxtaposing Parkins's shimmering harp and a host of dissonances. It's not by any means for the faint of heart. But if you've found yourself immersed in Evan Parker or Iannis Xenakis to the exclusion perhaps of the other, check out this Frith display. It'll strike you with awe. --Andrew Bartlett

Tracks:

Traffic Continues 1: Inadvertent Introduction
Traffic Continues 1: First Riddle
Traffic Continues 1: Traffic II
Traffic Continues 1: Third Riddle
Traffic Continues 1: Lourdement Gai
Traffic Continues 1: Traffic III/Traffic I
Traffic Continues 1: Freeway/Shadow of a Tree on Sand
Traffic Continues 1: Fragile Finale
Traffic Continues 2: Introduction: Limbo
Traffic Continues 2: Adage A/At Your Earliest Hesitation
Traffic Continues 2: Gyrate/Adage B
Traffic Continues 2: Not If I See You First
Traffic Continues 2: Any Other World
Traffic Continues 2: A Good Top Tongue
Traffic Continues 2: Nose at Tongue
Traffic Continues 2: Will Cast Some Light On
Traffic Continues 2: Adage D/Neither Fire Nor Place
Traffic Continues 2: Monkey Lens Dipthong String
Traffic Continues 2: Howdywhoola
Traffic Continues 2: No Convenient Time
Traffic Continues 2: One Never Knows Do One?/Adage Coda/Long Fade

Amazon.com

It's axiomatic in many contemporary music circles that post-60s free improvisation and New Music composition share many facets, not the least of which are the parallel studies in how tones and overtones can interact and how musical space can be used to better highlight textural matters. With Traffic Continues, guitarist and composer Fred Frith has carried the study of the New Music and out-jazz crossroads to new heights. He's enlisted, for the first segment of the two-part piece, Europe's Ensemble Moderne, picking up their catalog-deep knowledge of contemporary composition and sending them headlong through improvised passages that chatter and squiggle and pulse with brassy energy all the while. For the second installment of Traffic, Frith has added harpist Zeena Parkins and drum machinist Ikue Mori to the ensemble. Together, they pay homage to the late cellist Tom Cora and make a scrabbling go of it. The music wafts and explodes, grinds and soothes, juxtaposing Parkins's shimmering harp and a host of dissonances. It's not by any means for the faint of heart. But if you've found yourself immersed in Evan Parker or Iannis Xenakis to the exclusion perhaps of the other, check out this Frith display. It'll strike you with awe. --Andrew Bartlett

Jazz Music:

Jazz Music

Jazz Music