The Squid's Ear Magazine


Cosa Brava w/ Fred Frith: Ragged Atlas (Intakt)

Fred Frith's West Coast Cosa Brava with Carla Kihlstedt, Zeena Parkins, and Matthias Bossi playing all Frith compositions driven by his love of the (improvised) rock format.
 

Price: $18.95


Quantity:

Out of Stock

Quantity in Basket: None

Log In to use our Wish List
Shipping Weight: 5.00 units

Sample The Album:





product information:

Personnel:



Fred Frith-guitar, bass, voice

Carla Kihlstedt-violin, nyckelharpa, bass harmonica, voice

Zeena Parkins-accordion, keyboards, foley objects, voice

Matthias Bossi-drums, percussion, sruti box, voice

The Norman Conquest sound manipulation

Special guest:

Anantha Krishnan- mridangam and tabla on For R. D. Burman


Click an artist name above to see in-stock items for that artist.




UPC: 7640120191610

Label: Intakt
Catalog ID: ITK161.2
Squidco Product Code: 12882

Format: CD
Condition: New
Released: 2010
Country: Switzerland
Packaging: Jewel Tray
Recorded to 24 track analog at Tiny Telephone, San Francisco between December 17th and 21st, 2008. Engineer: Scott Solter. Assistant engineer: Laura Dean. Digital transfers, track rationalization, and additional recording by The Norman Conquest. Mixed at Jankowski Soundfabrik, Esslingen in July/August/December 2009. Engineer: Peter Hardt. Mastered at Headless Buddha, Oakland on January 11th, 2010. Engineer: Myles Boisen.

Descriptions, Reviews, &c.

"Cosa Brava is a quintet formed in March 2008 in Oakland, California by multi-instrumentalist and composer Fred Frith (Henry Cow, Skeleton Crew, Keep the Dog). Fred Frith's career began as a folk and later rock musician - he co-founded Henry Cow in 1968 - but has since diversified into a number of different genres, from avant-jazz to contemporary classical music. He has written scores for film and dance, and music for orchestras and string quartets. But, like a lot of musicians, the idea of "genre" is not really very interesting to him anyway!

The motivation behind the formation of Cosa Brava arose out of Frith's love of rock music in general and songs in particular. He said, "Over the years I've done a lot of improvising, and composed a lot of music on paper. I've written for orchestras and string quartets, directed ensembles of improvisers of all descriptions, produced scores for dance and film. I even somehow became a Professor of Composition! But I really miss what you can do with a rock band. I miss developing material through the push and pull of cooperative rehearsals, I miss what happens when you move away from "the parts" and start formulating things with a collective ear, I miss the single-minded commitment to a group identity. The musicians in Cosa Brava can improvise, read scores, AND rock the house. ... Like I say, if you pick the right players, chances are the music will take care of itself."

Frith had previously worked with Zeena Parkins in Skeleton Crew and Keep the Dog, and had collaborated with Carla Kihlstedt on several albums."-Intakt


Artist Biographies

"Though the point of reference for many remains the iconic band Henry Cow, which he co-founded in 1968 and which broke up more than 30 years ago, Fred Frith has never really stood still for an instant.

In bands such as Art Bears, Massacre, Skeleton Crew, Keep the Dog, Tense Serenity, the Fred Frith Guitar Quartet, Eye to Ear, and most recently Cosa Brava, he has always held true to his roots in rock and folk music, while exploring influences that range from the literary works of Eduardo Galeano to the art installations of Cornelia Parker.

The release of the seminal Guitar Solos in 1974 enabled him to simultaneously carve out a place for himself in the international improvised music scene, not only as an acclaimed solo performer but in the company of artists as diverse as Han Bennink, Chris Cutler, Jean-Pierre Drouet, Evelyn Glennie, Ikue Mori, Louis Sclavis, Stevie Wishart, Wu Fei, Camel Zekri, John Zorn, and scores of others.

He has also developed a personal compositional language in works written for Arditti Quartet, Asko Ensemble, Bang on a Can All-Stars, Ensemble Modern, Concerto Köln, and ROVA Sax Quartet, for example. Fred has been active as a composer for dance since the early 1980s, working with choreographers Bebe Miller, François Verret, and especially long-time collaborator and friend Amanda Miller, with whom he has created a compelling body of work over the last twenty years.

His film soundtracks (for award-winning films like Thomas Riedelsheimer's Rivers and Tides and Touch the Sound, Peter Mettler's Gambling, Gods, and LSD, and Deborah Kaufman and Alan Snitow's Thirst, to name a few) won him a lifetime achievement award from Prague's "Music on Film, Film on Music" Festival (MOFFOM) in 2007. The following year he received Italy's Demetrio Stratos Prize (previously given to Diamanda Galas and Meredith Monk) for his life's work in experimental music, and in 2010 was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Huddersfield in his home county of Yorkshire.

Fred currently teaches in the Music Department at Mills College in Oakland, California (renowned for over fifty years as the epicenter of the American experimental tradition), and in the Musik Akademie in Basel, Switzerland."

-Fred Frith Website (http://www.fredfrith.com/biography.html)
11/20/2024

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.

"Carla Kihlstedt (born 1971) is an American composer, violinist, vocalist, and multi-instrumentalist, originally from Lancaster, Pennsylvania and currently working from a home studio on Cape Cod.

She is a founding member of Tin Hat Trio (1997, renamed Tin Hat), Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, The Book of Knots, Causing a Tiger and Rabbit Rabbit. Other musical projects include 2 Foot Yard, Charming Hostess and Minamo (Carla Kihlstedt & Satoko Fujii). She is a recognized classical composer who has performed with the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), has worked occasionally on projects with Tom Waits and Fred Frith, and recorded numerous albums as a guest or session musician. Kihlstedt has studied at the Peabody Conservatory of Music, San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and Oberlin Conservatory of Music.

In February 2012 she founded Rabbit Rabbit with her husband (and former Sleepytime Gorilla Museum drummer) Matthias Bossi. Rabbit Rabbit released their debut album, Rabbit Rabbit Radio - Vol. 1 in 2013. The band revolves around a song-a-month subscription website called Rabbit Rabbit Radio."

-Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carla_Kihlstedt)
11/20/2024

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.

"Multi-instrumentalist/composer/improviser, Zeena Parkins, pioneer of contemporary harp practice and performance, reimagines the instrument as a "sound machine of limitless capacity." Parkins has built three versions of her one-of-a-kind electric harp and has extended the language of the acoustic harp with the inventive use of unusual playing techniques, preparations, and layers of electronic processing.

Inspired and connected to visual arts, dance, film, and history, Zeena follows a unique path in creating her compositional works. Through blending and morphing of both real and imagined instruments, crafting, recombining, and layering mangled, sliced, massaged or possibly disengaged sounds, drawing from extra-musical sources for unusual scoring and formal constructions as well as utilizing multi-speaker environments, Zeena remains in process with sound as material and music, engaged in translations of sonic states in the concert hall, the black box theater, the dance studio, the recording studio, the classroom, the cinema, the skyscraper, the ocean and the gallery. Zeena has a particularly strong commitment to making scores for dance and continues to re-evaluate the nature and issues of the body's imprint on sound and sound/music's imprint on movement.

Parkins's compositions have been commissioned by NeXtWorks Ensemble, Merce Cunningham Dance Company, Roulette Intermedium, The Eclipse Quartet, William Winant, Bang on a Can, The Whitney Museum, The Tate Modern, Montalvo Arts Center, The Donaueschinger Musiktage and Sudwestrundfunk/SWR.

Parkins has released four solo records featuring her electric and acoustic harp playing and has released her compositions and band projects on six Tzadik recordings, with a new Tzadik CD with Ikue Mori and Phantom Orchard Orchestra, Trouble in Paradise, to be released in November 2012. As a sought-after collaborator Zeena has worked with: Fred Frith, Björk, Ikue Mori, Dame Evelyn Glennie, Maja Ratkje, Hild Sofie Tafjord, John Zorn, Butch Morris, Chris Cutler, Elliott Sharp, Nels Cline, Alex Cline, William Winant, Anthony Braxton, Pauline Oliveros, Yoko Ono, Christian Marclay, Matmos, Yasunao Tone, So Percussion, Bobby Previte, Carla Kilhstedt, Tin Hat, James Fei, Kim Gordon, Lee Renaldo and Thurston Moore.

Awards: The Foundation for Contemporary Arts Fellowship, NYFA Music Fellowship, Meet the Composer Commission, NYSCA Composer Commission, Multi-Arts Production Fund Grant, American Music Center, BAFTA award for best interactive media with visual artist Mandy McIntosh and sound artist Kaffe Matthews, Peter S. Reed Fellowship, Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust Commissions, Arts International, Prix Ars Electronica Honorary Mention for Phantom Orchard in the Digital Music category.

Curatorial: Guest curator for The Music Unlimited Festival in Wels, Austria, co-curator of the Movement Research Festival: Sidewinder, in NYC and curator for a month + a week of shows at The Stone in NYC

Residencies: Civitella Ranieri Foundation Fellowship, Oxford University, Harvestworks, Steim, Paf: Performing Arts Forum, Wooda Arts Residency, Montalvo Arts Center, RPI/iEAR and The Watermill Center.

Teaching: Zeena has given lectures at Oxford and Princeton Universities and has taught at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Bard and Mills College. Currently, Zeena is a Distinguished Visiting Professor, at Mills College Graduate Music Department."

-Zeena Parkins Website (http://www.zeenaparkins.com/about.html)
11/20/2024

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.

"Matthias Bossi, voice, percussion, and keyboards (Dennis, MA), has played drums in Skeleton Key, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, Fred Frith's Cosa Brava, and The Book of Knots, and made records with John Vanderslice, St. Vincent, Pretty Lights and The Tiger Lillies. His video game production company with bassist/engineer Jon Evans, Ridiculon, has written soundtracks for the video game "The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth" and soon to be released "The Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth" "Super Meat Boy: 5th Anniversary" and "Super Meat Boy: Forever."

As an actor, Matthias has worked with the Shotgun Players, Pickle Family Circus, and action theatre pioneers Erika Shuch and Joe Goode. His current voiceover work can be heard on the sensational "Little Baby's Ice Cream" commercials, and also on a guided tour of Golden Gate Park produced by the SF-based audio walk company, Detour.

In February 2012, Matthias founded Rabbit Rabbit with his wife Carla Khilstedt. Rabbit Rabbit released their debut album, Rabbit Rabbit Radio - Vol. 1 in 2013. The band revolves around a song-a-month subscription website called Rabbit Rabbit Radio."

-YellowBarn (http://www.yellowbarn.org/artist/matthias-bossi)
11/20/2024

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.


Track Listing:



1. Snake Eating Its Tail 2:14

2. Round Dance 3:26

3. Pour Albert 4:38

4. R.D. Burman 4:20

5. Falling Up (For Amanda) 5:39

6. Out On The Town With Rusty, 1967 5:12

7. Lucky Thirteen 6:59

8. Blimey, Einstein 4:13

9. The New World 3:58

10. Tall Story 3:51

11. For Tom Zé 4:50

12. A Song About Love 6:25

13. Markey Day 6:43

Related Categories of Interest:

Intakt
Frith, Fred
Quartet Recordings
Improvised Music
Free Improvisation
NY Downtown & Jazz/Improv
London & UK Improv & Related Scenes

Search for other titles on the label:
Intakt.


Recommended & Related Releases:
Other Recommended Releases:
Parkins, Zeena / Jeff Kolar
Scale
(Two Rooms Records)
Commissioned by choreographer Jennifer Monson, the collaboration of Downtown NY electric harpist and sound artist Zeena Parkins and Chicago sound artist Jeff Kolar explore the intersection of acoustic phenonema against electronic, synthetic & radio sounds, inspired by the timing of natural phenomena like ocean currents and daylight emergence; fascinating.
Parkins, Zeena / Wobbly
Triplicates
(Relative Pitch)
Recording in electric harpist Zeena Parkin's office at Mills College in Oakland with Jon Leideker, aka Wobbly, performing on mobile phones, tablets, booper, and mixer, their output run through a series of simple listening devices, machines designed to sing along with the melodies they believe themselves to be hearing, though they are often wrong; singular and surprising!
Frith, Fred
All Is Always Now (Live at the Stone) [3 CDs]
(Intakt)
Guitarist Fred Frith performed 80 concerts at NY's The Stone between 2006-2016, in diverse configurations of duos, trios, quartets and large ensembles with some of the planet's finest improvisers, of which 23 recordings, titled from NY Times headlines of each concert's day, are presented in this essential 3-CD package, which includes a 24 page booklet detailing the collection.
Frith, Fred And Helen Mirra
Kwangsi - quail [VINYL]
(Shhpuma)
Helen Mirra uses the index of a W.G. Sebald's novel to create a mysterious, intriguing and fascinating audio world, performed by Mirra on printing press and acoustic guitar, and Fred Frith on rainsticks, mbira, charango, music box, voice, shoes and other objects.



Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought:
Bruckmann, Kyle
Triptych (Tautological)
(Carrier Records)
Performing on oboe, English horn and live electronics, West Coast double-reedist Kyle Bruckmann presents three extended solo works of deep electroacoustic binding, each dedicated to a writer, artist or musician: "A Spurious Autobiography for John Barth (2015)"; "An Extruded Introversion for Blixa Bargeld (2016)"; and "A Fuzzy Monolith for James Turrell (2015)".
Quartetski Does Stravinsky
Le Sacre du printemps
(Ambiances Magnetiques)
Quartetski Does Stravinsky with drummer Isaiah Ceccarelli, guitarist Bernard Falaise, reedist Phillipe Lauzier, viole de gamaba player Pierre-Yves Martel and violinist Joshua Zubot reinterpret Stravinsky's Rite of Spring in honor of its 100th anniversary.
Allum & Prevost
Penumbrae
(Matchless)
AMM percussionist Eddie Prevost playing all bowed sources in a subtle and ringing duet of bowing approaches with violinist Jennifer Allum of the London Post Quartet.
Bete Tete
Ji Mo De
(escape from dude mountain)
Bete Tete's first album, "Ji Mo De" was recorded in Jiangxi, Ganzhou, China during the winter of 2006, designed as a play on verbal structure developed in mandarin.
Phillips, Tomas / Francisco Lopez
IC
(Aural Terrains)
"Two compositional responses upon the same sonic matter from two sound artists" - Tomas Phillips, and Francisco Lopez each creating extended works using the same source materials.
Grid Mesh (Schubert/ Willers / Fischerlehner]
Coordinates
(FMR)
The Grid Mesh trio performing live at The Loft in Cologne, dark and biting improv with an electroacoustic edge that shifts between playful dialog to massive walls of sound.
Blue Sausage Infant
Flight of the Solstice Queens
(Zeromoon)
Chester Hawkins' long-running BSI project now based in DC, layering groove based (kraut)rock with unearthly sound sources, plundered samples, and all form of unmentionable sound.
Convergence Quartet (Bynum / Einsenstadt / Hawkins / Lash)
Song / Dance
(Clean Feed)
Cornetist Taylor Ho Bynum, drummer Harris Eisenstadt, pianist Alexander Hawkins and bassist Dominic Lash converge for 9 pieces of avant-jazz and free music.
Boeren, Eric 4tet
Song for Tracy the Turtle - Live in Brugge 2004
(Clean Feed)
Dutch improvisers cornetist Eric Boeren, saxophonist Michael Moore, bassist Wilbert de Joode with drummer Paul Lovens performing live in 2004 at Concertgebouw, Brugge.
Angles
Epileptical West - Live in Coimbra
(Clean Feed)
Saxophonist Martin Kuchen's Angles sextet with trumpeter Magnus Broo, trombonist Mats Aleklint and vibraphonist Mattias Stahl in jazz with a polyrhythmic and refined world music accent.
ElSaffar, Amir / Hafez Modirzadeh
Radif Suite
(Pi Recordings)
An important new recording in the continuing advancement of jazz from the trumpeter Amir ElSaffar and tenor saxophonist Hafez Modirzadeh.
Fight the Big Bull
All Is Gladness in the Kingdom
(Clean Feed)
Guitarist, composer and arranger Matt White with his unique big band including Steven Bernstein, J.C. Kuhl, John Lilley, BobMiller, Reggie Pace, Bryan Hooten, &c.
Free Jazz Quartet
Memories For The Future
(Matchless)
The quartet of Paul Rutherford, Harrison Smith, Tony Moore and Eddie Prevost from a concert in Bristol, UK in 1992, intricate and informed interplay from Euro free jazz masters.
Fond of Tigers
Release The Saviours
(Drip Audio)
Since 2003 this Vancouver septet has merged jazz, improv, electro-acoustic, and progressive/avant musics into an exhilarating ordered chaos of highly listenable music.



The Squid's Ear Magazine

The Squid's Ear Magazine

© 2002-, Squidco LLC