Guitar Solos
Released
Experimental guitarist Fred Frith has made so many albums over the decades, and in so many styles and with so many band configurations, that it’s tough to know where to start. Of his solo work, this is one of the two foundational albums. It documents his “guitars on the table approach,” which involved laying two guitars next to each other on a table and striking them, dropping things on them, bowing them, and manipulating the resulting sounds with various pedals and effects. The music is otherworldly, of course, and yet never merely noisy or abrasive; his genius is in making sounds that don’t necessarily sound like music as such, and yet can hold your attention like a pop song does.