Beefheart 2013

Having read John French’s book “Through the Eyes of Magic”, I thought I’d finally get a copy of the remastered “Trout Mask Replica” from around 2013. There are a few different CD pressings over the years, but the one remastered from a tape copy Frank Zappa had made from the original tape was said to be a big improvement over the original pressing. The Zappa family had it remastered in 2012 by Bob Ludwig, and released in 2013 on CD, and in 2018 on vinyl.

I heard about it in 2013, but at the time wasn’t interested enough to pick it up. When I looked for it a couple of weeks ago, I found that it had been a limited release, and wasn’t available. So I went to Discogs, and after much searching found one 2013 copy. Great.

I copied the CD to my hard drive, and started listening on headphones, eyes closed. Yeah, it works great. The instruments are clean and easily distinguishable, with one guitar panned far left, bass, voice, drums and horns to the center, and Zoot Horn Rollo’s guitar to the right. Some variations from track to track, as not all tracks had the same instrumentation or musicians.

Odd to listen to this so closely, so many years after first hearing it when it came out, and after just reading French’s book. The instrument overlaps are not really polyrhythms in the standard sense, as one instrument doesn’t try to fit, say, five beats into the same duration as a second instrument plays four. That approach to polyrhythms give a kind of smoothing of the beat, it resists one instrument taking over as dominant, instead the music moves like a ribbon of sound.

With the Magic Band’s approach, the tempo for all instruments is kept the same, and for the most part the beats fall on the same place for all instruments. However, the phrases the instruments play are of differing lengths, so that when one phrase ends another continues. French counted the beats in each phrase, and multiplied the phrases out so that each repeated until their patterns ended together. Thus, a five beat phrase and a four beat phrase each repeated until the musicians had played 20 beats (4 X 5). Then they could either start the pattern again, or switch to a new pattern. So, a different flavor of polyrhythm. This is why, say, Balinese gamelan sounds like a river streaming by, but the Magic Band sounds like ten trucks driving by with square tires.

The instruments hide behind each other, then one darts out when another is between notes. There are silences so much a part of their sound, silences appearing seemingly at random that you can fall into, then booting you out as another instrument’s phrase steps up to claim its place.

Van Vliet’s desert lyrics are still striking, and his voice is a thick brush gone wild on the instrumental canvas.

Great stuff. I’m going back to listen some more. And play.

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