Gravity (Fred Frith album)

Background

Fred Frith was a classically-trained violinist who turned to playing blues guitar while at school. In 1967 he went to Cambridge University where he and fellow student, Tim Hodgkinson formed the English avant-rock group Henry Cow. Frith and Hodgkinson remained with the band until its demise in 1978. After the release of Henry Cow's second album in May 1974, Frith recorded his debut solo album, Guitar Solos (1974), which featured unaccompanied and improvised experimental rock music played on prepared guitars by Frith without any overdubbing. Guitar Solos was well received by music critics, and was voted one of the best albums of 1974 by NME.

During the recording of Henry Cow's sixth album in January 1978, musical differences arose within the group over the prevalence of song-oriented material on the album. Some wanted purely instrumental compositions, while others, including Frith, favoured songs. As a compromise Frith and the band's drummer, Chris Cutler released the songs on an album Hopes and Fears (1978) under the name Art Bears, while the instrumental tracks, plus others recorded later were released on Henry Cow's last album, Western Culture (1979). Art Bears went on to make two more albums of songs.

After Henry Cow broke up, Frith moved to New York City in 1979 where he became involved with a number of musical projects, including a new solo album. To make a more "immediate" record after the intensities of Henry Cow and Art Bears, Frith turned his attention to world folk and dance music. In Hopes and Fears he had "rediscovered the joys of song-form", and it was the song "The Dance" that Frith and Cutler wrote for that album that inspired the making of Gravity. Frith said in a BBC interview:

Frith had been listening to music from other cultures, particularly Eastern Europe since the mid-1970s. He made no attempt to notate what he heard, but absorbed it and let it find its way later into his own music. On Gravity Frith mixed up all these different musical styles to make new songs out of them.

Recording

Gravity was the first of a series of projects Frith did for The Residents's record label Ralph Records. He had recorded with The Residents in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and appeared on several of their albums.

Frith used two backing bands for Gravity, Swedish Rock in Opposition group Samla Mammas Manna and United States progressive rock group The Muffins. He recorded side one of the LP record with Samla Mammas Manna at Norrgården Nyvla in Uppsala, Sweden, with additional recording at Sunrise Studios, Kirchberg, Switzerland in August 1979. Side two of the LP was recorded with The Muffins at Catch-a-Buzz Studio in Rockville, Maryland, United States in November 1979, with additional recording at Sunrise Studios in Switzerland in January 1980. Frith recorded two additional tracks with The Muffins, "Vanity, Vanity" and "Dancing in Sunrise, Switzerland", but they were omitted from the album due to space constraints. They appeared later on The Muffins's 1985 album, Open City.

Many of the tracks on Gravity consist of melodic lines woven into complex rhythmic structures taken from different folk music cultures. The time signatures are not the standard 3/4 or 4/4, but more complex signatures like 15/8. Frith described in an interview how he arrived in Uppsala with his carefully written music sheets, only to find that Samla Mammas Manna could not read music. But when he played the music to them, he was "stunned by their ability to hear the details, especially the rhythmic details, that I had written."

The title of the album came from a 1937 quote by Curt Sachs (printed on the back of the album sleeve) in which he described dance as "the victory over gravity". In 1980 Ralph Records also released a single from the album, "Dancing in the Street" b/w "What a Dilemma". It did not chart on any of the major music charts.

Music

Frith called Gravity a "dance album", not in the disco/funk sense of its day, but a collection of "dance music" drawn from cultures around the world. The album features an array of rock, folk and jazz instruments, plus field recordings, clapping and "whirling", and has been described as a "musical hybridization" of "Latin percussion, calypso festivity, eastern-tinged percussion [and] Klezmer-like celebration".

"The Boy Beats the Rams" opens Gravity with a burst of laughter followed by some tap dancing, "random" percussion and Frith's "distinctive keening" violin. On "Spring Any Day Now" Frith mixes a bossa nova rhythm with a North African melody. "Don't Cry For Me" features Greek mandolin with heavy metal guitar. "Hands of the Juggler" draws on Middle Eastern folk dance, "Slap Dance" is a Serbian "folk romp", and "Career in Real Estate" is in the tradition of a Scottish fiddle tune.

"Dancing in the Street" is a "de/reconstruction" of Martha and the Vandellas's 1964 hit that includes a "bizarrely harmonised guitar" playing the song's melody over a "boiling mass of feedback" and tape manipulation. According to the album's sleeve notes, this track also includes a recording of "Iranian demonstrators celebrating the capture of American hostages".

"Crack in the Concrete" features an e-bowed guitar over "edgy, dissonant chords" and a "massed kazoo choir of horns" that presages Frith's experimental rock band Massacre he formed in New York City in February 1980. "Norrgården Nyvla" flows into "Year of the Monkey" which ends with a brief sample of the 13th Puerto Rico Summertime Band, "ten seconds of the real thing" according to the LP liner notes.

Reception and influence

In the January 1983 edition of Down Beat magazine, Bill Milkowski wrote that in contrast to Art Bears's "bleak attitude", Frith's Gravity is a "truly joyous solo LP, [...] an extremely warm, almost whimsical album". Thomas Schulte at AllMusic described it as an "entertaining and multicultural pocket folk festival" and said it was "one of the most important guitar-based, experimental guitar titles from the avant-guitarist". In a BBC Online review of Gravity, Peter Marsh called it "Absolutely essential", adding that it "manages to be wildly eclectic yet avoids incoherence". Brandon Wu of Ground and Sky said that despite his "relative indifference" to the album, one of Gravity's great strengths is that it is both accessible and avant-garde.

Gravity inspired a 2003 album Spring Any Day Now by David Greenberg and David McGuinness with the Concerto Caledonia. Subtitled "Music of 18th century Scotland and elsewhere", the album includes covers of two tracks from Gravity, "Spring Any Day Now" and "Norrgården Nyvla", and a track from Frank Zappa's Roxy & Elsewhere (1974), "Echidna's Arf (Of You)".

Frith continued his exploration of folk and dance music on his next album for Ralph Records, Speechless (1981). As with Gravity, he recorded Speechless with two bands, French Rock in Opposition group Etron Fou Leloublan on one side of the LP, and Frith's New York City group Massacre on the other. The album included extensive tape manipulation, which was an ongoing passion of Frith's at the time.

Live performances

In August 2012 Frith led a performance of Gravity in San Francisco, California entitled "Fred Frith and Friends play Gravity". The performers were Frith, Dominique Leone, Jon Leidecker (Wobbly), Aaron Novik, Ava Mendoza, Jordan Glenn, Kasey Knudsen, Lisa Mezzacappa and Marië Abe. Frith led two more performances of Gravity at Roulette in Brooklyn, New York City on 19 and 20 September 2013, featuring Frith (guitar/electric bass), Leone (keyboards), Leidecker (sampling), Novik (clarinet/bass clarinet), Mendoza (guitar), Abe (accordion), Glenn (drums), Knudsen (alto saxophone), Mezzacappa (bass), Kaethe Hostetter (violin), and William Winant (percussion).

Frith formed the Gravity Band in 2014, comprising Frith (conductor/guitar/bass), Hostetter (violin), Knudsen (saxophone), Novik (clarinet), Abe (accordion), Leidecker (samples), Leone (keyboards), Mendoza (guitar), Mezzacappa (bass), Glenn (drums), Winant (percussion), and Myles Boisen (sound). They performed the album live at the 30th Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville in Canada in May 2014, at the Music Meeting in Nijmegen, Netherlands in June 2014, and at the Moers Festival in Germany, also in June 2014.

Track listing

All tracks composed by Fred Frith except where noted.

Side one

Guests

Recording and production

Recorded at Norrgården Nyvla in Uppsala, Sweden and at Sunrise Studios, Kirchberg, Switzerland in August 1979.

Side two

Guests

Recording and production

Recorded at Catch-a-Buzz Studio, Rockville, Maryland, United States in November 1979 and at Sunrise Studios, Kirchberg, Switzerland in January 1980.

Bonus tracks on 1990 CD re-issue

Recording

Artwork

CD reissues

In 1990 East Side Digital and RecRec Music re-issued Gravity on CD with six bonus tracks. In 2002 Fred Records issued a remastered version of the original Gravity with no bonus tracks.

Works cited