adrian belew - guitar
1) score with no film
2) portrait of the guitarist as a young drum
3) piano recital
4) laurence harvey's despair
5) piano ballet
6) rings around the moon
7) seven e flat elephants eating the acacia of a c# minor forest
8) if only...
9) alfred hitchcock's "strangers on a train" starring robert walker
10) finale
classic
i'm finding it difficult to understand the nature of the extreme backlash to this recording, although i will remind mr. belew that he had spent the preceding ten years trying to be a pop star. be careful what you wish for? i do, however, think it's important to begin with the caveat that this isn't what it's marketed as: rather than being a collection of "modern classical" pieces, it's an interesting piece of guitar-driven abstract jazz.
separating between orchestral free jazz and the more playful extremes of post-serialism is admittedly a bit of a moving target. jazz is often presented in contrast to "classical music", but in truth there was a confluence of thought in the twentieth century regarding moving away from rigid, theoretical structures. rather, i think jazz and serialism should be viewed as the same art movement. but, this is a discussion for reviews by schoenberg or davis or stockhausen. there is one very big difference, and that's the question of whether the music is written or improvised. some cage fan will scold me, and there were no doubt composed abstract jazz pieces, but this is really the thing that breaks these ideas apart. in that sense, this is jazz - because it's highly improvised. i don't hear any tone rows or die rolls, either...
further, the orchestral aspect is pretty noticeably second or third hand. as with other belew recordings, all of the orchestrations are coming from a guitar being played through a synthesizer. belew further takes great care to try and mimic the unique characteristics of each instrument and on this point succeeds fairly well. he works in canned applause to make the record seem as though it is a live concert, and if you didn't know better you might very well be tricked. so, it certainly sounds like an orchestra, but this isn't the same thing as saying it is substantial orchestral music.
see, and this is where the jazz v. classical distinction becomes really meaningful. there are a few sections (piano recital, for example) where it seems like he's trying to present the end product as a piano concerto. now, this is some fun guitar playing, but a piano concerto? it's hilarious, actually. likewise, when he wants to work in some crescendos, it consistently sounds more like eleventh earl of mar than any symphony i've ever heard. when he does bring in sections that pull back from the jazz playing, the influence seems to be film music - and, in fact, he names the tracks after films. these aren't really criticisms of the way it actually sounds, they're criticisms of the concept underlying the record.
so, in the end, the analysis of this is quite similar to the analysis of it's companion disc, desire caught by the tail: while it's absurdly pretentious, the creativity overpowers the pretension, if you have an open enough mind to allow for it. what's unfortunate is that adrian didn't have the self-awareness to recognize he should have been marketing this to fans of improvised jazz, where it stands out as interesting, and not to fans of classical music, where it comes off as hopelessly amateurish.