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Fred Frith & Ikue Mori: A Mountain Doesn’t Know It’s Tall
ByThat same Zen Buddhist experience is available to you with Fred Frith and Ikue Mori's A Mountain Doesn't Know It's Tall. Not that the pair played nothing, but the sounds they created could easily be those heard during a performance of "4:33," at least one performed on an orbiting space station's soundstage. Frith, first known for his guitar work in Henry Cow and Art Bears and later as bassist for John Zorn's Naked City, only picks up a guitar on two of the fifteen tracks here. Mostly it is homemade instruments, toys and unidentified objects that he (plays?) manipulates. That same massage happens with Mori's electronics. Her progression from drumming in the downtown trio DNA with Arto Lindsay in the late 1970s and early 80s to drum machines in Death Ambient evolved to laptop electronics. Mori can be heard with Satoko Fujii, Mette Rasmussen, Ken Vandermark, and Wadada Leo Smith, to name just a few musicians. Like Frith, in improvisation circles, she is in high demand.
That Zen connection is the motivation here. After scoring music for a radio play and soundtrack, both Zen Buddhist-related, Frith and Mori found they had an extra studio day. These 15 tracks came together, not as random improvisations, but more like a continuous whole. The music is, if anything, extraterrestrial. Woolly electronics, are they emanating from the body, the soul, or the mind? Does the Bladerunner have a dial-up modem? Is there a basilica on the moon? Mori's sound has evolved from beats to an electric elocution. Her language is circuits and atmospheres. Frith and Mori participate in a cyborg dialogue, part binary code/part organic. If we haven't told you enough about the actual sounds, that's because everyone hears something different during "4:33."
Track Listing
Bodaishin; The Biggest Lie; Stirred by Wind and Waves; Nothing to It; Fushiryō; The Biggest Idiots; Nothing at All; Shōdōka; Good for What?; The Same Moon Sometimes Seems to Smile; Things as They Are; Hishiryō; A Thief Breaks into an Empty House; Now Here; Samadhi.
Personnel
Additional Instrumentation
Fred Frith: home-made instruments, various toys and objects, electric guitar; Ikue Mori: Laptop electronics.
Album information
Title: A Mountain Doesn’t Know It’s Tall | Year Released: 2021 | Record Label: Intakt Records
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