Speechless (Fred Frith album)

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Speechless
Studio album by Fred Frith
Released	1981
Recorded	France and Switzerland, July-August 1980 USA, April 1980
Genre	Avant-progressive rock
Length	43:47
Label	Ralph (USA)
Producer	Fred Frith, Tina Curran, Etienne Conod, Robert Vogel and Francois Riether
Professional reviews
All Music Guide link Piero Scaruffi (7.5/10) link
Fred Frith chronology
Gravity (1980) Speechless (1981) Live in Japan (1982)
Fred Records chronology
Step Across the Border (2003) Fred Frith (RēR/FRO 03) Speechless (2003) Fred Frith (RēR/FRO 04) Middle of the Moment (2004) Fred Frith (RēR/FRO 05)
CD releases
Fred Records CD release. The cover includes a detail of the original Ralph Records (1981) cover.

Speechless is a 1981 solo album by English guitarist, composer and improvisor Fred Frith. It was Frith's third solo album, and his second for Ralph Records, a record label set up and run by American art rock group The Residents. It was recorded in France, Switzerland, and the United States, and featured French Rock in Opposition group Etron Fou Leloublan on the first side of the LP record, and Frith's New York City band Massacre on the second.

While Speechless is a studio album, some of the tracks were extracted from a Massacre concert, and later manipulated and overdubbed in the studio. The album cover artwork was prepared by Tina Curran, Frith's wife at the time. ^[1]

Contents 1 Content and reception 2 Track listing 3 Personnel 3.1 Side One 3.1.1 Guests 3.1.2 Production 3.2 Side Two 3.2.1 Guests 3.2.2 Production 4 CD reissues 5 References 6 External links

[edit] Content and reception

On Speechless, Frith continued the exploration of world folk and dance music that he began on Gravity (1980), his previous solo album. Here, however, he combines the music with chunks of found sounds and field recordings using studio editing techniques. The tracks on the album vary from folk and melodic pieces (including the waltz ballad "Domaine de Planousset"), to noisy avant-garde rock ("A Spit in the Ocean"), to layered sound collages ("Speechless"). Some of the taped sounds integrated into the music include a street demonstration on the track "Carnival on Wall Street", and the rhythmic pulse of a malfunctioning water pipe on the title track.^[2]

Rock critic Peter Marsh, in a BBC Music review, describes the album as "beautifully progressive musicmaking that doesn't take itself too seriously." ^[2]

Two live versions of "Domaine de Planousset" were later recorded by Frith:

• "Domaine Revisited" by Fred Frith and René Lussier in October 1986 at the 4th Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville in Victoriaville, Quebec, Canada and released on Nous Autres (1987);
• "Domaine de Langendreer" by Keep the Dog in mid-1991 at the Bahnhof Langendreer in Bochum, Germany and released on That House We Lived In (2003).

[edit] Track listing

Side One

1. "Kick the Can (part 1)" (Frith) – 2:19
2. "Carnival on Wall Street" (Frith) – 2:51
3. "Ahead in the Sand" (Frith) – 3:16
4. "Laughing Matter" / "Esperanza" (Frith) – 7:47
5. "Women Speak to Men; Men Speak to Women" (Frith, Curran) – 5:39

Side Two

1. "A Spit in the Ocean" (Frith) – 2:17
2. "Navajo" (Frith) – 3:05
3. "Balance" (Frith) – 5:04
4. "Saving Grace" (Frith) – 1:57
5. "Speechless" (Frith) – 3:05
6. "Conversations With White Arc" (Frith, Laswell) – 1:14
7. "Domaine de Planousset" (Frith) – 2:59
8. "Kick the Can (part 2)" (Frith) – 2:14

On Side Two, tracks 1, 4 and the end of 2 were recorded live at a Massacre concert at CBGB in New York City, April 1980, and were altered and added to later in Switzerland; track 6 is an unaltered improvised piece from the same concert.

[edit] Personnel

[edit] Side One

• Fred Frith – guitar, violin, mellotron, organ and bass guitar (1), voice (3)
• and Etron Fou Leloublan:
  • Guigou Chenevier – drums, tenor saxophone and voice (3)
  • Bernard Mathieu^[3] – soprano and tenor saxophones, voice (3)
  • Ferdinand Richard – bass, guimbarde, voice
  • Jo Thirion – organ, harmonium

[edit] Guests

• Tina Curran – recorders, unusual edits
• Roger Kent Parsons – bagpipes (4)
• Bob Ostertag – field tape recordings

[edit] Production

Recorded at Studio Freeson, Pujaut, France and at Sunrise Studios, Kirchberg, Switzerland in July and August 1980.

• Francois Riether – engineer (France)
• Etienne Conod – engineer (Switzerland)
• Robert Vogel – engineer (Switzerland)

[edit] Side Two

• Fred Frith – guitar, violin, keyboards, bass guitar (3,5,8), drums (2,3), voice
• and Massacre:
  • Bill Laswell – bass guitar
  • Fred Maher – drums

[edit] Guests

• Steve Buchanan – snake saxophone (2)
• George Cartwright – alto saxophone (1, 2, 4)
• Mars Williams – baritone saxophone (1, 2, 4)
• Tina Curran – recorders, bass guitar (2,7)

[edit] Production

Recorded at CBGB, New York City, United States in April 1980 and at Sunrise Studios, Switzerland in July and August, 1980.

• Charlie Martin – engineer (USA)
• Etienne Conod – engineer (Switzerland)
• Robert Vogel – engineer (Switzerland)

[edit] CD reissues

• In 1991 East Side Digital and RecRec Music re-issued Speechless on CD with six additional tracks:

1. "The Entire Works of Henry Cow" (Frith) – 1:00 (a tape collage of Henry Cow's entire discography, prepared for Morgan Fisher's 1980 Miniatures project)^[4]
2. "So Schnell Ich" (Frith, Laswell, Maher) – 3:25
3. "I'm Still Here and I Know What Time It Is" (Frith, Curran) – 1:06
4. "No More War" (Frith, Gore) – 4:46
5. "Typical American Family" (Frith) – 1:01
6. "Dig" (Frith) – 3:07

• In 2003 Fred Records issued a remastered version of the original Speechless LP with no extra tracks.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Speechless at Allmusic
• Fred Frith discography

v • d • e Fred Frith Henry Cow • Art Bears • Massacre • Skeleton Crew • Keep the Dog Duck and Cover • French Frith Kaiser Thompson • Death Ambient • Fred Frith Guitar Quartet • Maybe Monday • Cosa Brava Aksak Maboul • Material • Naked City Discography Guitar Solos (1974) • Gravity (1980) • Speechless (1981) • Live in Japan (1982) • Cheap at Half the Price (1983) • The Technology of Tears (1988) • The Top of His Head (1989) • Step Across the Border (1990) • Quartets (1994) • Middle of the Moment (1995) • Allies (1996) • Eye to Ear (1997) • The Previous Evening (1997) • Pacifica (1998) • Stone, Brick, Glass, Wood, Wire (1999) • Clearing (2001) • Freedom in Fragments (2002) • Accidental (2002) • Prints (2002) • Rivers and Tides (2003) • Eye to Ear II (2004) • Eleventh Hour (2005) • Impur (2006) • The Happy End Problem (2006) • Back to Life (2008) Related articles Fred Frith discography • Fred Records