Quote:
Originally Posted by clutnuckle
I'm mildly familiar with Fred Firth and have enjoyed some of the other stuff he's been involved with (Maybe Monday springs to mind), but this lacks any of the elegance I found in bands like Henry Cow that actually made me feel engaged in their music. I really like the instrumentation, and they're all over the place with it musically, but it stands still in terms of dynamics. Really didn't feel much differentiation. Though I doubt hearing this album has soured my future of exploring more of Firth's work, and I don't feel like I walked away completely empty-handed.
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That's an incredibly scathing review. I don't feel it's entirely fair to judge this album on dynamic when it's intended to be as laid back sounding as it is. It makes up for that in it's worlds of intricacy. If anything, it's beautifully strung together, and retains an element of subtlety in it's design that prevent it needing to go all over the place in those traits of timbre(bass, volume, etc) that would denote dynamic. That's where it gets it's elegance.
I'm not trying to tell you that you're wrong. But implore you to give this a deeper listen. There's a lot of information in there. Some you won't catch if you're not keeping your ears into it.