| Gravity | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
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| Studio album by | ||||
| Released | 1980 (1980) | |||
| Recorded | August 1979, Sweden and Switzerland November 1979, United States January 1980, Switzerland | |||
| Genre | ||||
| Length | 46:24 | |||
| Label | Ralph (US) | |||
| Producer | Fred Frith and Etienne Conod | |||
| Fred Frith chronology | ||||
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| Singles from Gravity | ||||
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| "Dancing in the Street" | ||||
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Gravity is a 1980solo album by Englishguitarist and composerFred Frith. It was Frith's second solo album, and his first sinceHenry Cow disbanded in 1978. It was originally released in the United States onthe Residents'Ralph Records, as the first of three solo albums Frith would record for the label.Gravity has been described as an avant-garde "dance" record that draws on rhythm and dance fromfolk music across the world.
Gravity was recorded in Sweden, the United States and Switzerland, and featured Frith backed by SwedishRock in Opposition groupSamla Mammas Manna on the first side of the LP and by Americanprogressive rock groupthe Muffins on the second side. Additional musicians includedMarc Hollander ofAksak Maboul and Frith's former Henry Cow bandmateChris Cutler.
Frith was aclassically-trainedviolinist who turned to playingblues guitar while at school.[1] In 1967 he went toCambridge University, where he and fellow studentTim Hodgkinson formedHenry Cow. Frith and Hodgkinson remained with various incarnations of the band until it disbanded in 1978.[2] After the release of Henry Cow'sUnrest in May 1974, Frith recorded his debut solo album,Guitar Solos, which featured unaccompanied improvisations onprepared guitars.Guitar Solos was well received by music critics,[3][4] and was voted one of thebest albums of 1974 byNME.[5]
During the recording of Henry Cow'sWestern Culture in January 1978, musical differences arose within the group over the prevalence of song-oriented material on the album. Some wanted purely instrumental compositions, while others, including Frith, favoured songs. As a compromise, Frith and drummerChris Cutler released the songs on the albumHopes and Fears asArt Bears, while the instrumental tracks becameWestern Culture.[2] Art Bears went on to make two more albums.[6]
Frith moved to New York City in 1979, where he became involved with a number of musical projects, including a new solo album.[7] To make a more "immediate" record after the intensities of Henry Cow and Art Bears, Frith turned his attention toworld folk and dance music. InHopes and Fears he had "rediscovered the joys of song-form", and it was the song "The Dance" that Frith and Cutler wrote for that album that inspired the making ofGravity.[8] Frith said in aBBC interview:[8]
Working on Chris’ words for "The Dance" made me think a lot about dance music and how different it was in different cultures, and how rigid and standardised disco was in comparison, and I just started exploring and mixing stuff together.
Frith said he researchedGravity on and off for about two years.[9] He had been listening to music from other cultures, particularlyEastern Europe since the mid-1970s. He made no attempt tonotate what he heard, but absorbed it and let it find its way later into his own music.[6] OnGravity Frith incorporated elements of this music into his songs, in particular "that contradiction between a kind of seriousness ... and a sense of celebration."[9] He stated, "I didn't ever try to reproduce the ethnic music of anywhere; that would be a singularly pointless exercise ... My intention was to draw on ethnic music and other sources to try to revitalize my approach, to explore new forms."[10]
Frith noted that people used to joke about Henry Cow's music, that you could not dance to it. He found it amusing that withGravity he had created an album of "dance music", although not the traditionalWestern dance music in4
4 with an "enormous beat".[9]
Gravity was the first of a series of projects Frith would record forthe Residents' labelRalph Records.[6] He had recorded with the Residents in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and appeared on several of their albums.[11]
Frith used two backing bands forGravity, SwedishRock in Opposition groupSamla Mammas Manna and Americanprogressive rock groupthe Muffins.[12] He recorded side one of the LP record with Samla Mammas Manna at Norrgården Nyvla inUppsala, Sweden, with additional recording at Sunrise Studios inKirchberg, Switzerland in August 1979.[13] Side two of the LP was recorded with the Muffins at Catch-a-Buzz Studio inRockville, Maryland, in November 1979, with additional recording at Sunrise in January 1980.[13] Frith recorded two additional tracks with the Muffins, "Vanity, Vanity" and "Dancing in Sunrise, Switzerland", but they were omitted from the album due to space constraints. They appeared later on the Muffins's 1985 albumOpen City.[11]
Many of the tracks onGravity consist of melodic lines woven into complex rhythmic structures taken from different folk music cultures. Thetime signatures are not the standard3
4 or4
4, but more complex signatures like15
8.[14] Frith described in an interview how he arrived in Uppsala with his carefully written music sheets, only to find that Samla Mammas Manna could not read music. But when he played the music to them, he was "stunned by their ability to hear the details, especially the rhythmic details, that I had written."[14]
In 1980 Ralph Records also released asingle from the album, "Dancing in the Street" b/w "What a Dilemma".[15]
"[Dance is] the victory over gravity, over all that weighs down and oppresses, the change of body into spirit, the elevation of creature into creator, the merging with the infinite, the divine."
The title of the album came from a 1937 quote byCurt Sachs (printed on the back of the album sleeve) in which he described dance as "the victory over gravity".[13]
In his 2019 bookHenry Cow: The World Is a Problem, Benjamin Piekut called the title "brilliant".[16] He wrote that after Frith's experiences with Henry Cow's restrictive way of conducting themselves, which Piekut called, "clumsy, slow, inefficient, and inconclusive", the titleGravity refers to the "carefree music therein as well as the ponderous concerns of [Frith's former band] reflected in its rearview mirror."[16]
Frith calledGravity a "dance album",[12] not in thedisco/funk sense of its day,[17] but a collection of "dance music" drawn from cultures around the world.[6] The album features an array of rock, folk and jazz instruments, plusfield recordings, clapping and "whirling", and has been described as a "musical hybridization" of "Latin percussion,calypso festivity, eastern-tinged percussion [and]Klezmer-like celebration".[18]
"The Boy Beats the Rams" opensGravity with a burst of laughter followed by sometap dancing, "random" percussion and Frith's "distinctive keening" violin.[17] On "Spring Any Day Now" Frith mixes abossa nova rhythm with a North African melody. "Don't Cry for Me" features Greek mandolin withheavy metal guitar. "Hands of the Juggler" draws on Middle Eastern folk dance, "Slap Dance" is a Serbian "folk romp", and "Career in Real Estate" is in the tradition of a Scottish fiddle tune.[6]
Frith explained that "Don't Cry for Me" is a hybrid of Greek music, Latin American rhythms and a Caribbean beat. He said, "It has a very strong dancing rhythm, and then every five-and-a-half bars or so the beat changes, leaving you wrong-footed, as it were. You have to readjust, and by the time you've readjusted you have to readjust again. It goes around in a circle like that, all the way through. Fun to watch in discos, not that it'll ever be played in them!"[19]
"Dancing in the Street" is a "de/reconstruction" ofMartha and the Vandellas's 1964 hit that includes a "bizarrely harmonised guitar" playing the song's melody over a "boiling mass of feedback" and tape manipulation.[17] According to the album's sleeve notes, this track also includes a recording of "Iranian demonstrators celebrating the capture of American hostages".[13]
"Crack in the Concrete" features an e-bowed guitar over "edgy, dissonant chords" and a "massed kazoo choir of horns" that presages Frith'sexperimental rock bandMassacre he formed in New York City in February 1980.[17] "Norrgården Nyvla" flows into "Year of the Monkey" which ends with a brief sample of the 13th Puerto Rico Summertime Band, "ten seconds of the real thing" according to the LP liner notes.[13]
In a 1980 review inSounds magazine, John Gill describedGravity as an album of "wonderfully stateless music", a blend of jazz, rock'n'roll, chamber, European ethnic, and New York City soul and Hispanic.[20] With a reference to Frith's former bands,Henry Cow andArt Bears, Gill added "[a]ndthis time, folks, youcan dance to it!"[20][italics in the source] John Diliberto calledGravity "a whirlwind flight across a cultural landscape where features run into each other with a rush".[21] Writing in a 1981 review inAudio magazine, Diliberto said the album's mood and tempo changes constantly: "a quaint bar mitzvah [becomes] a Middle Eastern waltz"; a climax of "fuzzed" guitars switches to a "light-hearted horse and buggy romp".[22] Diliberto stated that with Henry Cow and Art Bears, Frith's guitar work was "barely traditional", but on his solo albums, it was "totally anarchic", andGravity was no exception.[22] Bill Milkowski wrote in the January 1983 edition ofDownBeat magazine that in contrast to Art Bears's "bleak attitude", Frith'sGravity is a "truly joyous solo LP ... an extremely warm, almost whimsical album".[6]
| Review scores | |
|---|---|
| Source | Rating |
| AllMusic |   [23] |
Thomas Schulte atAllMusic describedGravity as an "entertaining and multicultural pocket folk festival" and said it was "one of the most important guitar-based, experimental guitar titles from the avant-guitarist".[23] In aBBC Online review ofGravity, Peter Marsh called it "absolutely essential", adding that it "manages to be wildly eclectic yet avoids incoherence".[17] Brandon Wu of Ground and Sky said that despite his "relative indifference" to the album, one ofGravity's great strengths is that it is both accessible and avant-garde.[12]
Nicole V. Gagné wrote in her 1990 book,Sonic Transports: New Frontiers in Our Music that Frith's laughter at the beginning ofGravity permeates the rest of the album. She said the dance music from around the world has "the delight and discovery and fun and energy which dancing releases".[24] Gagné described Frith's cover of "Dancing in the Street" as "a loving stab at American pop", adding that what makes it "uniquely wild" is the way the blend of rock music and tape noise "taps into the charm and exuberance of the song".[25] Gagné called the climax in "The Hands of the Juggler" "one of the high moments of the entire album" that "goes beyond any cultural allusion; it's a celebration of a spirit, a release into the Folk."[26]
Gravity inspired a 2003 albumSpring Any Day Now by David Greenberg and David McGuinness with the Concerto Caledonia.[27] Subtitled "Music of 18th century Scotland and elsewhere", the album includescovers of two tracks fromGravity, "Spring Any Day Now" and "Norrgården Nyvla", plus a track fromFrank Zappa'sRoxy & Elsewhere (1974), "Echidna's Arf (of You)".[11][28]
Frith continued his exploration of folk and dance music on his next album forRalph Records,Speechless (1981). As withGravity, he recordedSpeechless with two bands, FrenchRock in Opposition groupEtron Fou Leloublan on one side of the LP, and Frith's New York City groupMassacre on the other. The album included extensive tape manipulation, which was an ongoing passion of Frith's at the time.[7]
In August 2012 Frith led a performance ofGravity inSan Francisco, California entitled "Fred Frith and Friends play Gravity". The performers were Frith,Dominique Leone,Jon Leidecker (Wobbly),Aaron Novik,Ava Mendoza, Jordan Glenn, Kasey Knudsen, Lisa Mezzacappa and Marië Abe.[29] Frith led two more performances ofGravity at Roulette inBrooklyn, New York City on 19 and 20 September 2013, featuring Frith (guitar/electric bass), Leone (keyboards), Leidecker (sampling), Novik (clarinet/bass clarinet), Mendoza (guitar), Abe (accordion), Glenn (drums), Knudsen (alto saxophone), Mezzacappa (bass), Kaethe Hostetter (violin), andWilliam Winant (percussion).[30]
Frith formed the Gravity Band in 2014, comprising Frith (conductor/guitar/bass), Hostetter (violin), Knudsen (saxophone), Novik (clarinet), Abe (accordion), Leidecker (samples), Leone (keyboards), Mendoza (guitar), Mezzacappa (bass), Glenn (drums), Winant (percussion), and Myles Boisen (sound). They performed the album live at the 30thFestival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville in Canada in May 2014,[31] at the Music Meeting inNijmegen, Netherlands in June 2014,[32] and at theMoers Festival in Germany, also in June 2014.[33]
All tracks composed byFred Frith except where noted.
| No. | Title | Length |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | "The Boy Beats the Rams (Kluk Tluce Berany)" | 4:54 |
| 2. | "Spring Any Day Now" | 3:04 |
| 3. | "Don't Cry for Me" | 3:28 |
| 4. | "The Hands of the Juggler" | 5:31 |
| 5. | "Norrgården Nyvla" | 2:54 |
| 6. | "Year of the Monkey" | 4:11 |
| No. | Title | Length |
|---|---|---|
| 7. | "What a Dilemma" | 3:11 |
| 8. | "Crack in the Concrete" | 1:24 |
| 9. | "Come Across" | 2:47 |
| 10. | "Dancing in the Street" (Gaye,Stevenson,Hunter) | 3:20 |
| 11. | "My Enemy Is a Bad Man" | 1:22 |
| 12. | "Slap Dance" | 2:32 |
| 13. | "A Career in Real Estate" | 4:42 |
| 14. | "Dancing in Rockville Maryland" | 3:04 |
| No. | Title | Length |
|---|---|---|
| 15. | "Waking Against Sleep" | 2:08 |
| 16. | "Terrain" | 3:50 |
| 17. | "Moeris Dancing" | 5:03 |
| 18. | "Geistige Nacht" | 5:18 |
| 19. | "Life at the Top" | 1:40 |
| 20. | "Oh Wie Schon Ist Panama!" | 5:02 |
Recorded at Norrgården Nyvla inUppsala, Sweden and at Sunrise Studios,Kirchberg, Switzerland in August 1979.
Recorded at Catch-a-Buzz Studio,Rockville, Maryland, United States in November 1979 and at Sunrise Studios,Kirchberg, Switzerland in January 1980.
In 1990East Side Digital Records andRecRec Music re-issuedGravity on CD with six bonus tracks. In 2002Fred Records issued aremastered version of the originalGravity with no bonus tracks.
