Civilization Phaze III

Artist: Frank Zappa
Label: Zappa/Barking Pumpkin
Category: Music

Average customer rating:

Media: Audio CD
Number Of Discs: 2

UPC: 013347696928
EAN: 0013347696928
ASIN: B000003OVE

Release Date: 1995-04-04

Civilization Phaze III

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Tracks:

This Is Phaze I I I
Put A Motor In Yourself
Oh - Umm
They Made Me Eat It
Reagan At Bitburg
A Very Nice Body
Navanax
How The Pigs' Music Works
Xmas Values
Dark Water!
Amnerika
Have You Heard Their Band?
Religious Superstition
Saliva Can Only Take So Much
Buffalo Voice
Someplace Else Right Now
Get A Life
A Kayak ( On Snow )
N - Lite

Tracks:

I Wish Motorhead Would Come Back
Secular Humanism
Attack! Attack! Attack!
I Was In A Drum
A Diffrent Octave
This Ain't C N N
The Pigs' Music
A Pig With Wings
This Is All Wrong
Hot & Stupid
Flowing Inside - Out
I Had A Dream About That
Gross Man
A Tunnel Into Muck
Why Not?
Put A Little Motor In 'em
You're Just Insultin' Me, Aren't You!
Cold Light Generation
Dio Fa
That Would Be The End Of That
Beat The Reaper
Waffenspiel

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Amazon.com

This is Zappa's masterpiece of electronic music, conceived, composed and performed on his Synclavier, a computer system for music composition and recording. Civilization Phaze III is an astounding work, taking Zappa nearly ten years to finish. Released posthumously, this 2 CD set is a testimony to Zappa the composer, containing the pure fruits of his imagination and the hard work he continued until his death in 1993. Continuing the story of the piano people from Lumpy Gravy (and utilizing much of the same tape source material for it's interludes) the album fulfills on the promise of his Grammy-winning Jazz From Hell, the first album released of his Synclavier music. Rather than sounding artificial, the sampled instruments sound other-worldly, as if Zappa's latest band had traveled from a dimension where our own laws of space and time didn't apply. Strings morph into winds in the middle of a phrase, and different instruments trade alternating notes in the most complicated and fast of passages. Anyone interested in new experimental and electronic music will also want to check out Civilization Phaze III, the genre's best-kept secret. --Andrew Boscardin

Customer Reviews:

A Metaphysical Journey .......2007-02-15

Amnerika, Religious Superstition, Creationism, He is Risen, Secular Humanism, Beat the Reaper, Negative Light. This is an abstract music which is right at the edge of being pure sound effect. Zappa's attempt to deconstruct the Universe and find a fascination in presenting single separated sounds without a background, he also tries this on Yellow Shark and the results are less than convincing

Absolutely unlistenable.......2007-01-12

This is (along with Lumpy Gravy) by far the worst FZ album I've ever heard. I consider myself a huge Zappa fan (I own at least 30 FZ albums), and I like a wide range of his material, from the Flo & Eddie stuff to the '88 big band stuff. But the Synclavier material is pretty much unlistenable for me. It baffles me that Zappa thought the Synclavier could replace actual musicians. He had some of the best musicians in the business and he wanted to replace them with a computer? What was he thinking? This album is nothing but Synclavier music and inane, incomprehensible spoken word tracks. If you think you need to own every Zappa album, make sure this is the last one you buy. Trust me.

Essential must have for Zappa freaks!, .......2006-11-02

Why is this out of print????? This was the last project Zappa completed, apparently just weeks before he died. Listening to this, one can only wonder what he would have done, had he lived. It's clear from this, from "Jazz From Hell" and "Yellow Shark", that he was moving away from the rather mediocre rock-oriented stuff of the mid 80's. One reviewer commented that this album sounds like Zappa knew it would be his last project, and that he put everything he had into it. Certainly it's no easy listening. Do not look for "yellow snow" here (not that I don't love that stuff too!). This is definitely the densest, most intense music he ever did. This is not rock music at all. It's modern experimental composed music. Parts are played on a Synclavier, and parts are played by the Ensemble Modern (Yellow Shark band). He also incorporates remixes of the dialog from "Lumpy Gravy" and other stuff, including Tuvan throat singing (way cool!).

This will take several listenings to wrap your head around it. It's expensive, but particularly fans of his more experimental music must absolutely have this.

A masterpiece of electronic chamber music.......2006-05-21

Zappa worked on this project longer than any other. He got an idea for this in 1967 and taped some conversations. Some of them ended up to Lumpy gravy, but rest of them stayed on the shelfs many years, because technology wasn't advanced enough to finish this project. This work is definately a testament to Zappa's genius like one reviewer pointed. This album is performed almost completely by a synclavier, but it doesn't sound artificial. Actually this one of the greatest sounding albums I have ever heard. The sound is so relaxed. There are many odd sounds that are not playable with normal instruments and material here is very complex and probably unplayable by humans. What makes this album so interesting is that it is closer to classical music than techno or electronic music. This album tells you a story about a civilization that lives in the piano. The conversations here are continuation of Lumpy gravy and they detract musical pieces. The difference in this time is that they are separate songs. So you can skip them, if you are not interested.

But I found some of the dialogue very interesting and maybe it really means something on a symbolic level. Keep in mind that most of this album is instrumental. The longest tunes are 15 and 18 minutes long and in the best case you can listen nearly 20 minutes of music without any kind of stop. About 2/3 of this album is instrumental. This music can be difficult to understand, if you try to catch every single note. But when you understand what you are listening to it is quite easy. This is electronic chamber music. It makes your mind wandering other things and that's not because it's boring. The fact that this music makes your mind flow is really the strongest point of this album. Just close your eyes and be ready to be blown away.
This works well as a background music.

The music here is great and beautiful. Some weird sound effects spice up the things. One track called Waffenspiel is completely a collection of sound effects. You can visualize a war and a dog barking. This was Zappa's life long project and one of his most serious works. It is even occasionally dark and there's not much humour here, except maybe in some dialogues.The music here is rich, textured, unique and relaxing. Only flaw is that the longest dialogue sections last 5 minutes.This is not so inaccessible as some reviewers make it out to be. Maybe not good as a starting point, but highly recommendable.

P.S. N-Lite is one of the most adventurous musical pieces ever.

Hmm..this is a tricky one to review!.......2005-01-27

At first: I could not live without this record. The music is really unlike everything else you've heard. Im blinded by the brilliance of these complicated pieces. The package is nice.

BUT:

It has no magical moments found elsewhere in FZ:s albums, like where theres a guitar solo backed up with a tight band and you just go "Aaah!". I understand that that is not the meaning. Its ment to be a bit depressing and I enyoj it on these terms. But theres more:

Everything is not brilliant. Actually, Civ phase III is at times very boring. The talking people inside the piano are boring. Thats about 1/4 of the album. The whole second disc is weak. The final 15 minute "Beat the reaper" is so actually so boring that it makes me climb the walls.

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