[.ca] Trout Mask Replica

From Amazon.co.uk:
Probably the strangest album to regularly make critics' Top 100 Records of All Time, Trout Mask Replica is a landmark of idiosyncratic and visionary music-making. Don Van Vliet (christened Captain Beefheart by one-time colleague Frank Zappa) and The Magic Band rehearsed this record for over a year, translating Beefheart's ideas into fully fleshed-out pieces: although the record on first listen appears spontaneous and improvised, it is in fact carefully constructed, as the instrumental versions on the Grow Fins box-set demonstrate. Trout Mask Replica fuses blues, freeform jazz, rock, and Beefheart's surreal lyrics into an initially perplexing and daunting blend, in which the two guitars, drums and bass of10 seem to be playing four different songs at once--but over time, the music's angular, discordant shapes and rhythms not only begin to make sense, but take on an eccentric beauty. For those unfamiliar with Beefheart's work, check out the definitive compilation The Dust Blows Forward, or start with the luminously remastered Safe As Milk and Mirror Man. Both are essential records, but the man's mythical reputation begins and ends with the legacy of Trout Mask Replica. --Burhan Tufail

Chronique amazon.fr:
Collègue de Frank Zappa, la musique Captain Beefheart (également connu sous le nom de Don Van Vliet) et son Magic Band comptait parmi la plus excentrique produite dans les années 60, et par conséquent, de tous les temps. Point d'orgue de l'étrange carrière de Beefheart, ce double album de rock Dada comprend des morceaux intimidants comme "Pachuco Cadaver," "Hair Pie (Bakes 1 And 2)" et "Neon Meat Dream Of An Octafish", tout aussi étranges que leur titre. Avec les paroles mystérieuses et la voix caverneuse de Beefheart, le jeu tordu des deux guitaristes Zoot Horn Rollo et Antennae Jimmy Semens, du bassiste Rockette Morton et du batteur The Mascara Snake, cet album mérite bien l'expression "totalement barré". --Billy Altman

Utter genius - a musical "Ulysses" for psychedelia:
Opinions are divided about the Captain, as evidenced by the rabid one-star reviews and the equally rabid five-star reviews. I have never seen a page this polarized. Let's just make one thing clear - you will never get this album on first listen. Once you give it a couple of thorough listens, you can easily hear ideas, and then after that it will be pretty easy to see this album for what it is - rock music's equivalent of James Joyce's "Ulysses", which I wouldn't call the greatest novel ever, but certainly one of the greatest. Listen to "Ella Guru" - this is the best individual example of the Captain's method. At the beginning, the guitars play one riff, one lead guitar, one rhythm (the rhythm part, though, admittedly is in a different time signature from the rest of the group) and keep playing that riff until the "She got all the colors that nature do" line. They then abruptly switch to a different riff, over the bassline (which is in a different key, but harmonizes in odd places with the guitars) and drums' previous parts. When we get to the "High yellow high red high blue she blew/Hi Ella, high Ella Guru" line, everything switches again to a different riff. This riff is transitional, with the guitars harmonizing, the bassline snaking around and around, and the drumming (which I believe is what turns many people off the most - the drumming is almost never in 4/4 and focuses on truly offbeat accents for most of the album) doing its stuff. Then they go to the chorus, with that cowbell, and then the next section is a solo section, with the solo in the left speaker, with rhythm parts and bass and drums, then it changes again briefly, then back to the chorus. Throughout, everything that sounds "wrong" is repeated in a cohesive way, therefore becoming the song's riffs. And all the songs here, except for the a capella songs, "Moonlight On Vermont", "Veteran's Day Poppy", and "China Pig", are like this. It's really not all that hard to comprehend. Beefheart's lyrics are fantastically visual and very humanistic glimpses of another universe. So I should really leave this to you to decide, but to me, this is crazed, wild genius splattered across the face of popular music. I should also say that "Moonlight On Vermont" and "China Pig" are actually pretty conventional blues songs, and that "Veteran's Day Poppy" is a '60's protest song. Not everything works here - I'm no fan of, say, "Hobo Chang Ba" - but mostly it does, which is why most of the one-star reviews sell the album short. Please give "Ella Guru" another listen with the step-by-step I gave - you might get it this time. I'm not trying to sound patronizing, because it is really very hard to get into. But once you do, you'll never see music the same way again. Come on - are you gonna listen to Good Charlotte for the rest of your life?

LAME:
That is how I would describe all of you mudslinging soldiers of the amazon.com battlefield. I just read through a monstrous heap of 1 star and 5 star reviews and hardly anybody wrote about what they themselves liked or hated about the music and for what reason. Music is about the personal experience, nobody is right or wrong (probably). Now I'll write about myself. A couple of adjectives come to mind when I think of this cd, particularly absurd, excessive, extreme, childish, messy, and spontaneous. While I'm sure this sounds like a recipe for musical disaster to many people, this album puts me in a wonderful mood. It has that hilarious and wonderful feeling of childs play (eric dolphy's "out to lunch" comes to mind) that very few musicians are able to capture. Its that feeling that makes you forgive the music for its flaws, and love it for its highlights, which i feel outweigh the failures by a ton. At times this album sounds so cacaphonic that its funny, and while this could have made for a terrible album, its the conviction in the playing and singing that keeps it balanced (teetering precariously though); the harmonies, melodies, rhythms... music in general on this cd is pretty damn interesting and pleasing in a bizarre way. Overall, the album has that flowing feeling of "rock and roll" that draws you in and keeps that rocking feeling even when the band sounds as if its falling to pieces. On the down side the album is a bit long and i think a couple of songs could have been cut without too much loss. The production is pretty harsh and probably could have been better, but on the other hand i feel that it works well with the music. I guess some people might find the lyrics a bit pretentious (if you consider intentional half-sense to be pretentious), but I find them funny in their glorious absurdity The unlistenability of this album is completely overrated (aside from maybe the song Pena, which i happen to like a lot). I wont deny that it might be a difficult album to those unfamiliar with avant garde music, jazz, rock, blues... yeah just go into this album with as open a mind as possible, see what happens. beefheart never does what you think he'd do, and thats not a bad thing at all. this is music that cracks me up and has substance at the same time, balances things out. music doesnt have to be serious all the time. Fast and bulbous!

Odd, original and influential:
Take one part delta blues, some spoken word and poetry, free rock, and mix liberally with 5 to 600 tabs of acid and you might get something approximating Trout Mask Replica. This album sounds insane at first listen, as though the musicians had no clue to what they were doing. On closer inspection you'll find some extremely well thought out ensemble playing by one of the best and most eccentric bands in rock. Its polyrhythmically complex, harsh, sometimes tuneful and always interesting. The Magic Band were originally blues players but they certainly didn't stop there. Much of this music is beyond description, its gotta be heard to be understood. The guitars will both play different sometimes clashing riffs with the bass player somewhere in the middle. The drummer Drumbo (John French) is one of the most original players I've ever heard. He's invented a new language for the rock drum set, its incredibly polyrhythmic and uses every drum with near equal emphasis. Captain Beefheart rides over the top with his bizarre lyrics, amateur saxaphone and incredible voice. This is the album that artists as diverse as Andy Summers of the Police, XTC's Andy Partridge and DEVO have stated as being a major influence on their musical development. There would be no Pere Ubu without the good Captain and crew. Most people are not going to like this album, its not an easy listen by any means. Those with open ears and mind will find the experience rewarding though.

Influential album from the Cap'n:
Hey! This album is brilliant, but it takes a lot of patience and an open mind to appreciate it. For those who don't like it, you must come to realize that you don't understand it. Hopefully someday you will understand it. Until then, please don't slander the work. There are a lot of bands out there today who have created a hardcore style based off of this album. The influence (whether they know it or not) is unmistakable in bands like HELLA, DILINGER ESCAPE PLAN, VOLTA DO MAR etc... For those that think this album is random noise, try starting with tracks like "The dust blows forward and the dust blows back" or "Orange claw hammer" -they are unaccompanied vocal tracks (and some of the best poetry of the 20th century) And if you think that two saxophones played simultaneously can amount to nothing but nonsense (Mr. reviewer from the BRONX, NY) Check out Roland Kirk from YOUR hometown of New York who could not only play up to THREE saxes simultaneously.......WITH SOUL, but ripped at them!!

Great album:
This album can be a little difficult to get into at first. I knew I should expect some strange music, but I wasn't expecting exactly this. If you are a fan of Captain Beefhearts albums before and after this, I would not reccomend this. If you are a fan of the Spontaneous Music Ensemble, free improvisation, Tom Waits, noise rock, free jazz, and abstract poetry, I would reccomend it. Once it grows on you, this is an absolutely astounding record. Amidst a rambling garage rock song, a saxophone will scream out of the wilderness and lead the other instruments down a winding, atonal road. Right after an epic, dissonant blues rock song, Van Vliet will croak to life with a strange, stream of consciousness monlogue ("bubbles pop big.....in a lipstick kleenex..."). A crazed, Pharoah Sanders-esque clarinet and sax jam will lead into a rythmically dense rock song. This album really goes places no other album has gone or attempted to go, before or since. If you are a fan of art, you will like this albumed. Reccomended to the open minded.

• Frownland
• Dust Blows Forward 'N the Dust Blows Back
• Dachau Blues
• Ella Guru
• Hair Pie: Bake 1
• Moonlight in Vermont
• Pachuco Cadaver
• Bills Corpse
• Sweet Sweet Bulbs
• Neon Meate Dream of a Octafish
• China Pig
• My Human Gets Me Blues
• Dali's Car
• Hair Pie: Bake 2
• Pena
• Well
• When Big Joan Sets Up
• Fallin' Ditch
• Sugar 'N Spikes
• Ant Man Bee
• Orange Claw Hammer
• Wild Life
• She's Too Much for My Mirror
• Hobo Chang Ba
• Blimp (Mousetrapreplica)
• Steal Softly Thru Snow
• Old Fart at Play
• Veteran's Day Poppy