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(2019) Frank Zappa - The Guitar World According To Frank Zappa
Review:
“The Guitar World According To Frank Zappa” – the 1987 guitar compilation by Frank Zappa was originally available on cassette only through Guitar World magazine and Barfko-Swill mail order. The album was mastered by Chris Bellman at Bernie Grundman Mastering. The album features unique mixes and edits exclusive to this release. After his 1984 tour, Frank Zappa put his guitar down for four years before one last live hurrah. In the interim years he issued a number of studio and archival live recordings. Amidst that flurry was 1987’s limited edition cassette released in conjunction with Guitar World Magazine and by mail order from his own company. It was called The Guitar World According To Frank Zappa. The eight-song mini LP sounds crisp and cleanin the way that many of Zappa’s 80s productions tended to sound. While some of the original sources here were probably analog there is likely some digital enhancement in here somewhere along the way, it was the 80s and Frank was deep in his digital groove by then so it stands to reason this was taken from his master made at the time for the cassette release. That isn’t a bad thing, mind you and this one actually sounds real good once you get acclimated to the bright feel of the album. The clear vinyl is quiet and well centered and it was all mastered by Chris Bellman at Bernie Grundman Mastering. Ultimately The Guitar World According To Frank Zappa is all about the music and the guitar and there are some gems here. The album starts with the under-appreciated, achingly beautiful duet called “Sleep Dirt” – one of the only tracks Zappa ever issued recorded on Acoustic Guitar.
There are several examples of Zappa’s compositional production process here which he dubbed “Xenochrony” – a methodology where he would extract portions of recordings from different sources to make a new mash up work that probably would never have been possible to create otherwise.
From the Wiki: quote from Zappa explaining the process:
“A classic “Xenochrony” piece would be “Rubber Shirt”, which is a song on the Sheik Yerbouti album. It takes a drum set part that was added to a song at one tempo. The drummer was instructed to play along with this one particular thing in a certain time signature, eleven-four, and that drum set part was extracted like a little piece of DNA from that master tape and put over here into this little cubicle. And then the bass part, which was designed to play along with another song at another speed, another rate in another time signature, four-four, that was removed from that master tape and put over here, and then the two were sandwiched together. And so the musical result is the result of two musicians, who were never in the same room at the same time, playing at two different rates in two different moods for two different purposes, when blended together, yielding a third result which is musical and synchronizes in a strange way. That’s Xenochrony. And I’ve done that on a number of tracks.” In an easier to digest manner, Zappa explains in the liner notes to The Guitar World According To Frank Zappa that it is “sort of like Monday and Tuesday crammed together into the space of Wednesday”…
Tracklist:
01. Sleep Dirt
02. Friendly Little Finger
03. Excerpt From Revised Music For Guitar And Low-Budget Symphony Orchestra
04. Things That Look Like Meat
05. Down In De Dew
06. A Solo From Heidelberg
07. A Solo From Cologne
08. A Solo From Atlanta
Summary:
Country: USA
Genre: art rock
Media Report:
Source: CD
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec, 16-bit PCM
Bit rate mode: Variable
Bit rate: ~ 637-861 Kbps
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits |
