Search - Massacre :: Funny Valentine

Who would expect anything but density and fall-down grinding from Massacre? After all, that's Fred Frith tormenting his poor guitar; Bill Laswell dropping bass lines with enough dub coloring to make them sound like rhythmic molasses; and Charles Hayward mixing patterns from slow-grind rock to free jazz. The first iteration of this trio cut a pretty wicked path with Killing Time in 1983 (with Fred Maher on drums), so this follow-up (of sorts) comes a decade and a half later and clocks in a little more methodically. There are plenty of collisions between avant rock and whatever you'd call the music Laswell's usually associated with--free rock, post-avant rock, or whatever. To say that Frith brings along impressive improvising abilities would be selling the British pioneer short, and he realigns what he knows best into a tipping, tumbling marriage of extreme guitar possibilities--granite blocks of sound cut through with slashes of color, et cetera--and medium-slow jams. For all their contributions, Laswell and Hayward seem obliged to let Frith explore his brambles of off-time speed and train wrecks of near-noise. And that helps this become a fine outing for the trio. --Andrew Bartlett