Girish Mahajan (Editor)

That House We Lived In

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Released
  
August 2003 (2003-08)

Artist
  
Keep the Dog

Producer
  
Fred Frith

Genre
  
Experimental rock

Length
  
96:17

Release date
  
August 2003

Label
  
Fred Records (UK)

That House We Lived In httpsuploadwikimediaorgwikipediaenthumbc

Recorded
  
1991, Austria, Italy, Germany

Similar
  
The Previous Evening, The Happy End Problem, Traffic Continues, Freedom in Fragments, Eye to Ear II

That House We Lived In is a double live album by the United States experimental rock band Keep the Dog. It comprises material from their final European tour in 1991 and was released by Fred Frith on his own Fred Records in 2003.

Contents

Background

Keep the Dog (1989–1991) was Fred Frith's review band that performed live in Europe, North America and the former Soviet Union. Material for this album comes from DAT recordings of the band's final performances in Austria, Germany and Italy in May and June 1991. Frith only considered releasing an album of their work in 2002 when Jon Leidecker spotted the tapes in Frith's office and volunteered to assemble a montage for review.

Frith arranged the tracks on the two CDs to "... re-create the feeling of a typical two-set concert while including as much of our repertoire as possible within the time constraints of the format." While the pieces represented a typical concert, they were in fact selected from some 20 different performances on their final tour.

Content

The tracks on That House We Lived In are primarily Frith compositions from about a dozen of his solo, group and project albums. All are free interpretations by the band of the originals, often leading to improvisation. These include "pop" tunes like "Some Clouds Do" from Cheap at Half the Price, "dance" numbers like "Rock and a Hard Place" from Allies, "Hola, On Danse!" from the rock opera, Dropera, and two of Frith's "classics": "Norrgården Nyvla" from Gravity, and "Domaine de Langendreer" (originally "Domaine de Planousset") from Speechless. Two versions of Massacre's "Bones" are here: a take on the original, and a slow number rendering it barely recognisable as "Bones". A few of the tracks are entirely improvised and do not appear elsewhere, like "Revelation" and "That Home We Lived In".

That House We Lived In is largely an instrumental album with the occasional vocal utterances from members of the group. The closest anyone comes to actually singing is when Frith belts out the refrain "some clouds do, some clouds don't" on "Some Clouds Do".

Track listing

Disc 1
  1. "Revelation" (Derome) / "Bones" (Frith, Laswell, Maher) – 4:59
  2. "Rock and a Hard Place" (Frith) – 5:45
  3. "Hola, On Danse!" (Frith, Richard) – 2:20
  4. "Foot in Hole" (Frith) – 7:38
  5. "Fanfare" / "Lizard's Tail" (Frith) – 4:31
  6. "Suspended" (Frith) – 2:02
  7. "Quick Sign" (Frith) – 5:16
  8. "Propaganda Suite" (Frith) – 8:37
  9. "Walking Song" (Frith) – 5:32
  10. "Some Clouds Do" (Frith) – 2:57
Disc 2
  1. "The Same Eye" / "Fives" (Frith) – 5:37
  2. "No Legs" / "Slow Bones" (Frith) – 7:13
  3. "That Home We Lived In" (Keep the Dog) / "Candy Machine" (Frith) – 3:24
  4. "The Trace" (Frith, Kaiser) – 5:18
  5. "True Love (instrumental version)" (Frith) – 4:01
  6. "Instant Party" (Frith) – 3:07
  7. "Small Mercy II" (Frith) – 3:34
  8. "Norrgården Nyvla" (Frith) – 3:13
  9. "Year of the Monkey" / "Dark as a Match" (Frith) – 6:21
  10. "Domaine de Langendreer" (Frith) – 4:52

Original recordings

Most of the above tracks were adapted from original recordings by Fred Frith that appeared on the following albums:

  • Gravity (1980) by Fred Frith: "Norrgården Nyvla", "Year of the Monkey"
  • Killing Time (1981) by Massacre: "Bones", "No Legs", "Slow Bones"
  • Speechless (1981) by Fred Frith: "Domaine de Langendreer"
  • Who Needs Enemies? (1983) by Fred Frith and Henry Kaiser: "The Trace"
  • Cheap at Half the Price (1983) by Fred Frith: "Walking Song", "Some Clouds Do", "Instant Party"
  • The Country of Blinds (1986) by Skeleton Crew: "Foot in Hole"
  • The 20th Anniversary of the Summer of Love (1987) by various artists: "True Love"
  • The Technology of Tears (1988) by Fred Frith: "Propaganda Suite"
  • Step Across the Border (1990) by Fred Frith: "Candy Machine"
  • Invisible Means (1990) by French Frith Kaiser Thompson: "Lizard's Tail", "Quick Sign"
  • Dropera (1991) by Fred & Ferd (Fred Frith and Ferdinand Richard): "Hola, On Danse!"
  • Helter Skelter (1992) by Fred Frith and François-Michel Pesenti: "Dark as a Match"
  • Allies (1996) by Fred Frith: "Rock and a Hard Place", "Small Mercy II"

    • Performance venues

    The tracks on That House We Lived In were taken from Keep the Dog's final European tour in May and June 1991 performed at:

  • Theater Am Kornmarkt, Bregenz, Austria
  • Elizabethenbuhne, Salzburg, Austria
  • Kulturzentrum Wolkenstein, Stainach, Austria
  • Bahnhof Langendreer, Bochum, Germany
  • Fabrik, Hamburg, Germany
  • Manufaktur, Shondorf, Germany
  • Teatro Dada, Castelfranco Emilia, Italy
  • Shocking Club, Milano, Italy
  • Verona, Italy

    • Personnel

  • Fred Frith – guitar, bass guitar, violin, voice
  • René Lussier – guitar, bass guitar
  • Jean Derome – alto saxophone, baritone saxophone, flute, guimbarde, voice
  • Zeena Parkins – accordion, electric harp, piano, synthesizer, voice
  • Charles Hayward – drums, found objects, melodica, voice
  • Bob Ostertag – sampling keyboard
  • Claudia Engelhart – live sound mix, DAT recording

    • Production

  • Jon Leidecker – first montage and final cleanup
  • Fred Frith – producer
  • Peter Hardt – engineer
  • Myles Boisen – mastering
  • Edited and sequenced at Jankowski Studio, Esslingen, Germany, July 2002
  • Mastered at Headless Buddha Mastering Labs, Oakland, United States, March 2003

    • Songs

    1Revelation / Bones4:59
    2Rock and a Hard Place5:45
    3Hola - on Danse!2:20

    References

    That House We Lived In Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA