A little bit later on

OK, a few months after I said I'd start this, comes the first musicy post. Go tthe idea for this one from something F. Zappa said: "Great music is available with NO WORDS at all!". Or something like that. But, I guess you can figure out where this is going. A couple of picks of INSTRUMENTAL music! Don't fall asleep, this stuff is great.

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The Grand Wazoo - Frank Zappa
This WILL NOT become an FZ tribute blog, don't worry, but I do need to start with something, and this was one of the best ideas I had. What appeals to me about this album is that it manages to, in a typically Zappa way, fuse so many genres but mainly rock and jazz while making it sound very good, more than merely 'passable' and can actually stand on its own amoung his more 'celebrated' works without sounding cliched or like 'just another album'. When you hear the words 'rock fused with jazz', the dreadful jazz fusion noises of people trying too hard to be clever. Zappa's Varese influences are also prominent on the album, and do a good job of blurring the jazz and rock boundaries. The result is a beautiful cocktail of genre-defying sound that you'd be hard pushed to compare to anything.

Key Tracks:
As there's only five tracks, it's hard, but the track that sums up the album best, I feel, is "The Grand Wazoo" title track. The easiest to get into is probably the fourth track, "Eat That Question".

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Bitches Brew - Miles Davis
This is a seminal masterpiece. Again, on this album, Miles is never afraid to experiment with different, conventionally 'wrong' time signatures and modal scales. A lot of the album is improvised and uses modal scales to great effect. Along with Zappa, Davis was a master band leader in the studio. His way of working (giving instrumentalists minimal instructions - a tempo, chord progression etc) led to a very tight band operation on the sme wavelength as each other and quickly able to adapt to any changes that Davis indicated. Some of the quieter passages have Davis' instructions (such as 'keep it tight', etc) audible. I love this almost underproduced feel and the real feel of spontanaity on the album

Key Tracks:
Again, very hard to chose from as there's only six of them (and this is a double album!), but the 27-minute title track is a must.

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Obscured By Clouds - Pink Floyd
Today's last selection is not a completely instrumental album, but the non-vocal tracks are superb. There is a higher volume of instrumental tracks as this is effectively a soundtrack album - Pink Floyd had scored music for the french film 'La Valee'. 'Scored' is a bit of a loose term, as, at this point, Floyd were very much into long studio improvisations before Roger Waters took a greater degree of control. Caught in between the landmarks of 'Meddle' and 'Dark Side of the Moon', I feel that Obscured By Clouds is very much a neglected and forgotten album. The album was written during the earlier DSOTM sessions, and is to my mind of very equal quality. Some truly wonderful Pink Floyd improvisation in this album, and an almost out-of-character more rocky feel sets this album apart for me.

Key Tracks:
Obscured By Clouds, When You're In

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Or at least, that's what I feel.