To call this disc a total collaboration between legendary
\nconductor Pierre Boulez (helming the Ensemble Intercontermporain)
\nand composer Frank Zappa is a bit of a misnomer, as only three of
\nthe seven tracks feature Boulez and orchestra. Yet the
\ncollaboration should have produced some of the strongest efforts to
\nsupport Zappa’s claim of being a serious composer. Instead, it
\nprovides some of the weakest.<\/p>\n
The title track – commissioned by Boulez – is an absolute mess,
\ntaking various cacophonies and trying to pass them off as music.
\nMaybe this was truly in the style of Edgard Varese, a composer
\nwhose works I’ve admittedly never studied – but to the casual
\nclassical listener, this is going to come off sounding worse than a
\ndisc filled with white noise. Whatever story is supposed to be
\ngoing along with the music contained herein, I’ll never comprehend
\n– and, frankly, I no longer want to.<\/p>\n
“Dupree’s Paradise” – an orchestral working of an older Zappa
\ntrack – has a little more success, but even this one does not live
\nup to one’s expectations – and, though I admit my knowledge of
\nclassical music is limited, I’d have had higher expectations for
\nBoulez. (Then again, from what I’ve read about him, he’s always
\nbeen a bit of a radical in the stuffed-shirt world of classical
\nmusic.) The same can be said for “Naval Aviation In Art?” –
\nlistenable, but nothing special.<\/p>\n
The remainder of
\nThe Perfect Stranger<\/i> comes to the listener courtesy of the
\n“Barking Pumpkin Digital Gratification Consort” – in layman’s
\nterms, Zappa and his newest toy at the time, the Synclavier. This
\nkeyboard-like device allowed Zappa to program in his music and have
\nit produced in any instrumentation he chose. Of these remaining
\nfour tracks, the best that can be said about them is that most of
\nthem are brief – “The Girl In The Magnesium Dress” and “Love Story”
\nbeing the most listenable of the bunch. “Outside Now Again” – a new
\ntake on the track from
\nJoe’s Garage<\/i> – seems to be just a jumble of noise that never
\nmaterializes into anything special, while “Jonestown” – a track I’m
\nfiguring was supposed to reflect the horrors of the massacre
\ninstituted by Jim Jones in Guyana in 1979 – never reaches that
\nlevel of menacing horror that I believe Zappa meant it to.<\/p>\n
In the end,
\nThe Perfect Stranger<\/i> ironically becomes the perfect
\ndescription of Zappa in this project. Reducing his music to
\nunrecognizable sludge, Zappa gains no points in his attempt to be
\nseen as a serious composer (despite the headway he had made with
\nprojects like
\nOrchestral Favorites<\/i>), and his early noodling on the
\nSynclavier almost served as a warning that Zappa may soon decide he
\nno longer needed a backing band to create his music in a way he saw
\nfit. In that regard, Zappa came dangerously close to becoming a
\nstranger to the audience who had followed his every move for nearly
\ntwo decades at this stage.<\/p>\n
2005 Christopher Thelen and “The Daily Vault.” All rights
\nreserved. Review or any portion may not be reproduced without
\nwritten permission. Cover art is the intellectual property of the
\nZappa Family Trust \/ record label, and is used for informational
\npurposes only.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[5625],"rating":[11205],"class_list":["post-38539","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-frank-zappa","rating-rating-d-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/38539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38539"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/38539\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=38539"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=38539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}