Frank Zappa: Jazz From Hell
By Peter Mengaziol
Frank Zappa
Jazz From Hell
Barking Pumpkin
Zappa's digitized Jazz From Hell is a continuation of the tradition begun in the days of the Mothers of Invention, circa Hot Rats: improvisational-sounding music that has been carefully composed. Rather than being tortured jazz, this album often sounds, as a Persian friend of mine put it, as if you were witnessing some ritual of an outerspace medieval culture (especially "The Beltway Bandits," "G-Spot Tornado" and "Damp Ankles").
Most of Jazz From Hell is that fusion-like rock-chamber music that Zappa seems to have invented: polyrhythmic figures dart in and out of ebbing and flowing dissonances, all anchored by a strong pulse and interjected with sampled vocal sounds. After all, it was Zappa who said that you could play anything as long as it had a backbeat. On this album, most of the playing is via Frank's Synclavier, which is called on to execute musical passages that most musicians would find impossible to play. This is the most important side of Zappa, the intellectual composer/arranger.
Almost all of Jazz From Hell is Synclavier-generated and recorded with the exception of "St. Etienne," a live track with the Steve Vai-era band. This track shows the other side of the Frank Zappa dichotomy: he is a guitarist profoundly rooted in the blues. As a guitarist, he stretches the single-string guitar vocabulary from its delta origins to oblique but logical extrapolations. This is so much more interesting than hearing arpeggio calisthenics over bare fifths.
This album is not immediately easy to listen to, so it requires multiple passes before you can appreciate it fully. It is sophisticated composition, having little to do with dancing fools, valley girls or senatorial buffoonery. Great stuff but not for the slow of mind.