Rabble Without A Cause
Wednesday April 11th, 2012 with Bernard Stepien
Fred Frith - to SAIL, to SAIL 2008

A guitar is traditionally a plucked strings instrument. In the hands of guitarist Fred Frith, this is no longer true. Over the last 35 years he found ways to play the guitar in a myriad different ways beyond recognition. He has had a prolific recording activity too. Some critics said that the year 2008 was an exception with few recordings, but his to SAIL, to SAIL CD is an extensive master piece he must have extensively focused on. Frith, normally an electric guitarist, concentrates his art on an acoustic steel guitar this time. He recorded only three CDs on the acoustic guitar in his career. But on this particular CD he threw all the techniques he found over the years at it. Sliding, percussion in a dulcimer like fashion, oriental sounding like a Chinese Pipa or Japanese Biwa, semi-muted strings, thumbing like on an African mbira, percussively metallic, flamenco-like organic strings, Gamelan percussive, overtones by the ton, bouncing objects, resonances, textures, rubbing, bowing, oscillating, drumming, dense, sparse, peaceful.