Late Works

There are two ways to describe this album. One is to say that it is a fearless excursion into avant garde free improvisation by two of contemporary music's most adventurous groundbreakers. The other is to say that it's self-indulgent gibberish. Both are more or less equally valid. One of the problems with this disc is that the "avant garde" isn't as new as it used to be, and those who care for squeaking, squalling and honking on alto sax already have Zorn's back catalogue to explore. There is no question that he gets some amazing noises out of his instrument here: on "Horse Rehab" for example, he starts with squeaky kisses and ends with an especially wet raspberry. Since I don't personally play the saxophone I can't say how difficult these sounds are to produce, but some of the circular breathing is liable to leave the listener breathless. Fred Frith's contribution also involves a non-standard approach to the instrument. In his case, the electric guitar is treated variously as a percussive instrument and as an electric noise generator. Feedback, crunch and distortion are much evidence, as are occasional bursts of rhythmic accompaniment, although these are never sustained enough to interfere with the general sense of "random" improvisation. Oddly, Frith and Zorn do manage to create music in which there is a real sense of cooperation between these extreme technical approaches. After you've been listening for a while, if you've really been concentrating, it all starts to make a bizarre sense. This is probably the listener's ear conspiring in the confidence trick though. If you want to hear this album at its most accessible, try "The Fourth Mind" or "Slow Lattice". Both of these are slow, atmospheric pieces that rein in the stylistic tics. On an album that is otherwise dominated by convulsions, twitches and eccentricities these tracks provide concessions by the two musicians to the idea of providing conventional musical contrasts. Although they are generally unobjectionable, they provide little in themselves that would be a basis for recommending Late Works. When you can no longer work out whether it is a sincere attempt to push forward the boundaries of improvisation or an elaborate joke at the listener's expense, it's probably time to admit that an album has badly misfired. Steer well clear.