Frith, Fred - Guitar Solos / Fifty 2 x vinyl lps (due to size and weight, this price for the USA only. Outside of the USA, the price will be adjusted as needed)
SKU
05-WE 005LP
Here is the first-ever vinyl reissue of this landmark album PLUS a second lp of all new stuff.
In the 50 years since this was released, so much has happened, and artists like Keith Rowe and Derek Bailey have become relatively well known, so that the shock of this record back then is hard to imagine now. But as a member of a medium-profile ‘progressive rock band’ on a high-profile ‘progressive rock label’, Fred Frith was watched and known by people who didn’t know Derek from a hole in the ground in 1974 (raises hand). And this album was shocking, believe me.
“Guitar Solos is the debut solo album of British guitarist, composer, and improviser Fred Frith. It was recorded while Frith was still a member of the English experimental rock group Henry Cow and was released originally in October 1974.
Voted one of the best albums of 1974 by NME critics it also attracted the attention of Brian Eno, resulting in Frith playing guitar on two of Eno's albums.
Frith's never tiring spirit in creating and performing music has made him one of the most notable and creative guitar players and musicians in the scene of improvised and composed music. For the anniversary of this release, Week-End Records have encouraged Frith to arrange a set up similar to what he used 50 years ago to record an album of new compositions which will accompany the original record.”
“Hugely influential at the time, and still legendary, this is just Fred alone with electric and acoustic guitars, and the help of multiple pick ups, scrapers, and countless techniques for getting new sounds out of the guitar. He describes some of his techniques:
“Theres a number of voices coming from one guitar. I use a stereo guitar, with a pickup at the wrong end of the neck, thats three separate sources going into three separate channels, each of which can be equalised and treated differently. So one channel might be clean, and another might be distorted, which makes them sound very different from each other. And when you put a capo across the 12 fret, the notes on the left and right of the capo are not only different, but not even in the same tuning, so you're dealing with micro-tonality as well. And if you have a volume pedal on each line, you can decide which aspect of the guitar is heard when.
Thats the basic premise for Guitar Solos, and its still the basic set-up I work with today, except that I seldom use a capo any more I prefer to let things bleed into each other more. It requires a completely different technique to control the different aspects of this system, involving both hands and feet, which is perhaps why no-one else has taken it up, even now after [all of these] years.”
- LabelWeek-End
- UPC4250101463655