A good head-cutter knows it’s not what you play, but how you play it.”
Chris Brown, composer, pianist, and electronic musician, creates music for acoustic instruments with interactive electronics, for computer networks, and for improvising ensembles. Collaboration and improvisation are consistent themes in his work, which is also founded on a practice of inventing and building electronic instruments. He teaches electronic music at Mills College, in Oakland, California, where he is Co-Director of the Center for Contemporary Music (CCM).
Fred Frith, composer, multi-instrumentalist, and fellow-explorer, creates music for and with acoustic and electric instruments, using the recording process as his primary compositional medium and working with film and video-makers, choreographers, painters, and sculptors, as well as musicians. Collaboration and improvisation are insistent themes in his work, which is also founded on a practice of re-invention and de-construction. He teaches composition and improvisation at Mills College, in Oakland, California, where he is continually inspired by his activities as football coach and avid bird-watcher.
credits
released June 1, 2007
Fred Frith: Electric & Acoustic Guitars
Chris Brown: Piano & Electronics
All music by Chris Brown and Fred Frith. Recorded in January 2002 and August 2004, in Mills College Concert Hall, Oakland. Mixed and edited at See a Dog, Hear a Dog Studio, Berkeley in May 2006. Engineer: Philip Perkins. Mastered at Headless Buddha, Oakland, October 2006. Engineer: Myles Boisen. Cover photo: Heike Liss. Graphic design: Jonas Schoder. Produced and published by Intakt Records. Executive production: Patrik Landolt
Multi-instrumentalist, composer, and improviser Fred Frith has been making noise of one kind or another for almost 50 years.
Fred is best known as a pioneering electric guitarist and improviser, song-writer, and composer for film, dance and theater.
On this sprawling double LP, the South African drummer leads his band through a series of mournful and vibrantly melodic spiritual jazz compositions. Bandcamp Album of the Day Jul 6, 2020