Fred Frith

Naked City was an avant-garde music group led by saxophonist and composer John Zorn. Active primarily in New York City from 1988 to 1993, Naked City... was initiated by Zorn as a "composition workshop" to test the limits of composition in a traditional rock band lineup. Their music incorporated recognizable elements of jazz, surf, classical, heavy metal, grindcore, country, punk rock and other genres. In Naked City's characteristic early style, songs were often performed at astonishingly fast tempos, drawing heavily on thrash metal and hardcore punk's emphasis on extreme speed. Many songs were quite brief, and typically switched musical genres every few measures. One critic described Naked City's music as "jump-cutting micro-collages of hardcore, country, sleazy jazz, covers of John Barry and Ornette Coleman, brief abstract tussles — a whole city crammed into two or three minute bursts". This fast-change tendency was inspired in part by Carl Stalling — a Zorn favorite — who wrote music for many Warner Brothers cartoons ; music that featured frequent shifts in tempo, theme and style.
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Art Bears were an English avant-rock group formed during the disassembly of Henry Cow in 1978 by three of its members, Chris Cutler , Fred Frith and... Dagmar Krause . The group released three studio albums between 1978 and 1981, and toured Europe in 1979. In 2008 Cutler, Frith and others formed Art Bears Songbook, an Art Bears "review" project that performed at the Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville in Quebec, Canada. Art Bears were formed during the recording of Henry Cow's last album after disagreements arose over the album's content. Frith and Cutler favoured song-oriented material, while others in the band preferred instrumental compositions. As a compromise, Frith, Cutler and Krause agreed, early in 1978, to release the songs already created on their own album, Hopes and Fears, under the name Art Bears, with the rest of Henry Cow credited as guests. The instrumental material appeared later on the final Henry Cow album, Western Culture . Hopes and Fears thus consisted of Henry Cow songs with the addition of new Art Bears material recorded later by Frith, Cutler and Krause.
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Henry Cow were an English avant-rock group, founded at Cambridge University in 1968 by multi-instrumentalists Fred Frith and Tim Hodgkinson. Henry... Cow's personnel fluctuated over their decade together, but drummer Chris Cutler and bassoonist/oboist Lindsay Cooper were important long-term members alongside Frith and Hodgkinson. An inherent anti-commercial attitude kept them at arm's length from the mainstream music business, enabling them to experiment at will. Critic Myles Boisen writes, "their sound was so mercurial and daring that they had few imitators, even though they inspired many on both sides of the Atlantic with a blend of spontaneity, intricate structures, philosophy, and humor that has endured and transcended the 'progressive' tag." While it was generally thought that Henry Cow took their name from 20th-century American composer Henry Cowell, this has been repeatedly denied by band members. According to Hodgkinson, the name "Henry Cow" was "in the air" in 1968, and it seemed like a good name for the band. It had no connection to anything. Fred Frith met Tim Hodgkinson, a fellow student, in a blues club at Cambridge University in May 1968.
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Tzadik Records is a record label based in New York City specialising in avant-garde and experimental music. The label was established by the eclectic composer and saxophonist John Zorn in 1995; Zorn is the executive producer of all Tzadik releases. Tzadik is a not-for-profit, cooperative record... label. Tzadik has released over 400 albums by a variety of artists with diverse musical backgrounds, including, but not limited to free improvisation, jazz, noise, klezmer, rock and experimental composition. John Zorn who composed the score for the 2006 film The Treatment won a MacArthur Foundation, the "Genius" award for his music in 2006. The album, titled Filmworks XVIII: The Treatment features a full score for film by John Zorn. The album was released on Tzadik Records.
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Ralph Records was The Residents' original record label, the name coming from the somewhat colorful phrase "calling Ralph on the porcelain telephone." Ralph was founded in 1972, shortly after the group had moved to San Francisco, when the band realized that they were the only people who would be... willing to publish their work. They "unincorporated" themselves as The Residents Uninc. and managed the new company under that name. One of the group's members could draw, so they gave the company a graphic design wing called Porno Graphics, aka Pore-Know Graphics, aka Poor No Graphics, aka Porneaugraphics, etc., and the whole operation was run out of their new two-story building at 18 Sycamore St. in the Mission District. They named their studio El Ralpho, spoofing Sun Ra who had named his El Saturn. Ralph's first release was December 1972's Santa Dog , a two-disk single which was mailed out for free to about three hundred people — friends, radio stations, even Richard Nixon and Frank Zappa were sent copies . This was followed by the band's first album, Meet the Residents , recorded in 1973 and released in 1974.
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Fred Records is a British independent record label created in 2002 by English guitarist, composer and improvisor Fred Frith to re-release his own back catalogue of recordings and previously unreleased material. It is an independent company working in co-operation with Chris Cutler and Recommended... Records, utilising Recommended Records' distribution network. From the mid-1980s Fred Frith released much of his music on the Swiss independent record label RecRec Music. However, the label went bankrupt in 1997 after its founder, Daniel Waldner died in a mountain climbing accident in 1995. Under Swiss copyright law all the rights to Frith's music released by RecRec reverted back to him, totalling 13 different titles. Having lost money in unpaid royalties, Frith wanted to re-release all the titles on a single label. In the early 2000s and with the help of Chris Cutler of Recommended Records, Frith set up his own label, Fred Records as an imprint of Recommended Records. The new label gave Frith an opportunity to re-issue material from his archives that would have been difficult to release elsewhere.
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