This is the third release from Fred’s outstanding el. guitar quartet, live from various dates on their previous European tour. This is an all — star unit, each member a leader & guitar great in their own right, each one gets a chance to compose a piece, as well as solo on one piece each. What is interesting is that it is often difficult to tell who is doing what, since each of these players employ so many unorthodox techniques to their guitars — e bows, numerous objects rubbed or struck against the strings, various distortion devices, too many ideas to mention here. Nick Didkovsky (from Dr. Nerve) recently played a marvelous solo set at the Knit, he had just gotten off tour with this quartet and he sounded like he had absorbed many ideas from Fred’s long history of influence and extended guitar weirdness. Listening to four e — bows drone together on Fred’s Antaeus is like a somber cello intro, parts soon expand, chatter jazzy grooves, lines intersect, the ghost of Les Paul appears as the pace quickens although there is no studio trickery here. It was Mark Stewart (of the Bang on a Can All Stars) that inspired that last bit. René Lussier’s Tout de Suite rums the gamut from subtle & quirky to short episodes of controlled chaos, always well balanced, textures slowly shifting thin to thick… Fred Frith will tentatively be organizing a three to five day 50th birthday celebration at the Knit in May or June, doing a retrospective of his entire career in music, here’s hoping that his outstanding Guitar Quartet will be a part of this special Frith festival, as they were the highlight of Victo ’96.

Nick Didkovsky, Fred Frith, René Lussier, Mark Stewart, soit le Fred Frith Guitar Quartet. Un des combos les plus réjouissants du moment. La matière de leur nouvel opus est constituée d’extraits de concerts et de prises de studio enregistrées pendant leur tournée européenne de novembre 1997. Déclinaisons imitatives ou dissonances majestueuses, brisures soudaines ou cinglances nonchalantes, l’Upbeat se livre en crépitements intuitifs. Les compositions de chacun sont autant de terres d’espiègleries, portant des missives à quatre voix. Que ce soit pour les tentations bruitistes de Lussier, ou le pamphlet country de Mark Stewart, l’unisson n’a de valeur que s’il est libertin. Initiateur et récolteur, Fred Frith est un druide nécessaire.

Captés lors d’une série de concerts européens, ces treize morceaux du Fred Frith Guitar Quartet couvrent une bonne partie des innombrables possibilités sonores qu’offrent les vingt-quatre cordes de guitares à leur disposition. Le groupe est capable de courtes salves punchées et d’explorations bruitistes, et flirte même avec des sonorités presque pop (Motormouth). Bien qu’excellents dans les échanges, c’est dans leurs solos que les quatre musiciens déploient tout leur talent: Frlth explore des territoires plutôt atmosphériques, allant jusqu’à imiter le son d’une comemuse; alors que sur Tout de suite, le Montréalais René Lussier fait preuve d’une dextérité qui brouille la frontière qui sépare composition et improvisation.

It has been a long time ago since I have heard a new CD from Fred Frith. In the 80s I used to follow his career. But since he started profiling himself as a “composer” my interest declined. With listening to Up beat it is as meeting an old friend, where the meeting has to prove if the relationship can be renewed or not. Frith started this quartet in the early 90s together with Nick Didkovsky, Mark Stewart and René Lussier. Their first release dates from 1997. I haven’t heard it. So I make a comparison with that other guitar quartet: Les Quatre Guitaristes de L’Apocalypso Bar (also with René Lussier). This guitar quartet delivered two albums in the 80s that are much more traditional then Frith’s quartet. Avant rock echoing Conventum and Henry Cow, where Frith’s quartet is much into the exploration of sounds and dynamics. Not rock music, but with rock energy. Only a few tracks remember of a music that they seem to have left behind: Old Bones is a tune from Massacre, Out to Bomb Fresh Kings recalls early Doctor Nerve and Red Rag is in the end just a rag. The other material shows that they are expanding the possibilities of guitar music. This quartet was Frith’s most important performing group in the 90s and they prove that there is more to be expected from them in the next century.

It’s been remarked that Fred Frith’s life mission is to extend and mutate the role of the electric guitar in music. His work has meant the broadest expansion of avant rock, and since the 70s he’s been moving further away from a rock sensibility. But if his Guitar Quartet is at a remove from rock tradition. there’s no sign of weakness. It fits with an increasing interest in relatively formal composition.

His quartet is successor to a late 70s venture for Guitar Quintet It took seven years for the first CD to appear, on a Québec-based label that more usually specialises in electroacoustic music and Industrial slanted sound poetry Coming two years affer Ayaya Moses. Up Beat could well represent a quickening in Frith’s step But there is an admirable restraint here Frith is waiting till he has something to say, and Up Beat certainly says a great deal. As on Ayaya Moses, his colleagues are René Lussier, Nick Didkovsky and Mark Stewart and this is a collection of live improvisations from their 1997 European tour.

Sources are hard to pin down, as you’d expect with this brilliantly unpredictable musician, but a lot of the subversion is directed at Country & Western Mark Stewart’s solo Speedy Feety has a Country feel, which becomes really hokey on Red Rag a corny melody set against a gauzy, blurred backdrop. Faced with increasingly.

Ce n’est pas évident, mais c’est plus fort que moi. Il faut au moins que je vous le signale. Je vous parle de la parution de Up Beat, le petit dernier du Fred Frith Guitar Quartet. Un bilan de la tournée européenne (1997) des quatre guitaristes électriques: Fred Frith, René Lussier, Mark Stewart et Nick Didkovsky. Deux ans après Ayaya Moses, les quatre complices s’en donnent à cœur joie sur leurs cordes amplifiées. Difficile? C’est selon l’oreille qu’on veut bien y mettre. De la musique actuelle composée et improvisée par des artistes à l’imagination débridée, à la virtuosité consommée, dotés d’une culture musicale large comme ça. Et qui, de toute évidence, s’amusent comme des fous à échanger. Du bruit, diront certains? Oui, du bruit… mais modelé par un sens peu commun de l’organisation, marqué par le souci de la surprise. Ça nous en apprend davantage sur la musique et sur… soi. Pour oreilles averties. Il n’en tient qu’à vous d’en être. Bonne écoute!