''The Technology of Tears (And Other Music for Dance and Theatre)'' is a

double album A double album (or double record) is an audio album that spans two units of the primary medium in which it is sold, typically either records or compact disc. A double album is usually, though not always, released as such because the recording i ...

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

guitarist A guitarist (or a guitar player) is a person who plays the guitar. Guitarists may play a variety of guitar family instruments such as classical guitars, acoustic guitars, electric guitars, and bass guitars. Some guitarists accompany themselv ...

composer A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music. Etymology and Defi ...

and improvisor

Fred Frith Jeremy Webster "Fred" Frith (born 17 February 1949) is an English multi-instrumentalist, composer, and improviser. Probably best known for his guitar work, Frith first came to attention as one of the founding members of the English avant-rock ...

. It is the first of a series of Music for Dance albums Frith made, and is sometimes subtitled ''Music for Dance volume 1''. It was recorded between June 1986 and April 1987, and released on a double LP and a single CD by

RecRec Music RecRec Music was a Swiss independent record label created in 1983 by Daniel Waldner. The label was modeled on, and affiliated to, the British independent record label Recommended Records, but remained financially independent. The label went ba ...

(Switzerland) and on a double LP only by

SST Records SST Records is an American independent record label formed in 1978 in Long Beach, California by musician Greg Ginn. The company was formed in 1966 by Ginn at age 12 as Solid State Tuners, a small business through which he sold electronics equipm ...

(United States) in 1988. It was re-issued on CD in 2008 by

Fred Records Fred Records is a British independent record label created in 2002 by the 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 ...

(United Kingdom). All the CD releases omit the ''Propaganda'' suite (side 4 of the double LP). The album comprises three suites: *''The Technology of Tears'', commissioned by

Rosalind Newman Rosalind Newman (born November 12, 1946) is an internationally acclaimed choreographer who has created a body of over 70 works. Career Newman's original New York City company, Rosalind Newman and Dancers, had major seasons in New York at the Joyc ...

and first performed by her dance company at the Joyce Theatre,

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

in February 1987; *''Jigsaw'', commissioned by the Concert Dance Company of

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

as a collaboration between Fred Frith, Rosalind Newman and Pier Voulkos and funded in part by the

National Endowment for the Arts The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal ...

and the New Works Program of the Massachusetts Council on the Arts and Humanities; *''Propaganda'' (omitted on the CD releases), commissioned by the Creation Production Company, written and directed by Matthew Maguire and first performed at La Mama ETC in New York City from 1 to 24 May 1987. Frith composed all the music and plays most of the instruments, with assistance from

John Zorn John Zorn (born September 2, 1953) is an American composer, conductor, saxophonist, arranger and producer who "deliberately resists category". Zorn's avant-garde and experimental approaches to composition and improvisation are inclusive of jaz ...

, Tenko Ueno,

Christian Marclay Christian Marclay (born January 11, 1955) is a visual artist and composer. He holds both American and Swiss nationality. Marclay's work explores connections between sound, noise, photography, video, and film. A pioneer of using gramophone records ...

and Jim Staley. The ''Propaganda'' suite was reworked and remastered in February 2015, and released by

as ''

Propaganda Propaganda is communication that is primarily used to influence or persuade an audience to further an agenda, which may not be objective and may be selectively presenting facts to encourage a particular synthesis or perception, or using loaded ...

'' in November 2015.

The music

On ''The Technology of Tears'', Fred Frith continues his exploration of world dance music he began on ''

Gravity In physics, gravity () is a fundamental interaction which causes mutual attraction between all things with mass or energy. Gravity is, by far, the weakest of the four fundamental interactions, approximately 1038 times weaker than the stro ...

'' and '' Speechless'', this time supplementing traditional instrumentation with

digital technology Digital technology may refer to: * Application of digital electronics * Any significant piece of knowledge from information technology Information technology (IT) is the use of computers to create, process, store, retrieve, and exchange al ...

to generate patterns, pulses and

noise Noise is unwanted sound considered unpleasant, loud or disruptive to hearing. From a physics standpoint, there is no distinction between noise and desired sound, as both are vibrations through a medium, such as air or water. The difference arise ...

. Samples are used throughout, accompanied by horns, sporadic percussion and wordless vocals. The album is a mix of

musique concrète Musique concrète (; ): " problem for any translator of an academic work in French is that the language is relatively abstract and theoretical compared to English; one might even say that the mode of thinking itself tends to be more schematic, ...

folk music Folk music is a music genre that includes traditional folk music and the contemporary genre that evolved from the former during the 20th-century folk revival. Some types of folk music may be called world music. Traditional folk music has b ...

and

improvisation Improvisation is the activity of making or doing something not planned beforehand, using whatever can be found. Improvisation in the performing arts is a very spontaneous performance without specific or scripted preparation. The skills of impr ...

. On the first part of the ''Technology of Tears'' suite, Frith experiments with

Henry Kaiser Henry John Kaiser (May 9, 1882 – August 24, 1967) was an American industrialist who became known as the father of modern American shipbuilding. Prior to World War II, Kaiser was involved in the construction industry; his company was one of ...

's newly acquired

synclavier The Synclavier is an early digital synthesizer, polyphonic digital sampling system, and music workstation manufactured by New England Digital Corporation of Norwich, Vermont. It was produced in various forms from the late 1970s into the early 1 ...

, at the time the state-of-the-art sampling and processing technology. On parts two and three of the suite Frith plays mostly "low-grade" instruments with added samples by turntablist

. ''Jigsaw'' is a collection of dozens of musical cells, "each recorded separately in increments of between 3 and 12 measures; all at the same tempo, and in the same key". The intention was that the modules could be assembled in any order to create the final piece. The reason for this approach was that

had requested that many changes be made, and with ''Jigsaw'' she could arrange the segments how she wished. In the end, she accepted Frith's demonstration sequence as the final piece.

Reception

A reviewer at

AllMusic AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the databas ...

, "Blue" Gene Tyranny, described the ''Technology of Tears'' suite as "... unrelenting slices of hard-edged sounds over a pulse ...", ''Jigsaw'' as "... patterns with constantly shifting accents and sub-divisions ...", and ''Propaganda'' as "... a series of brilliantly evocative soundpieces with electronics, guitar, and sound effects ...". Reviewing the 2008 CD release of the album, Rick Anderson described the three-part ''Technology of Tears'' suite as a "pulsing barrage of sounds", broken occasionally by Frith's East-European rhythms and "angular" melodies, and Zorn's "atonal squawks". He found the sounds "attractive enough in themselves", but at times "a bit overwhelming in this dense and complex context". Anderson called ''Jigsaw'' "a highly episodic collection of brief sound collages, each of them built on pulsing but sometimes quirky rhythms". He said it is Frith's "good humor and wit" that stops this work from becoming "purely assaultive skronk", and added that "there is a cheerfulness to even his most abrasive work that makes it far more listenable than that of many of his other ... colleagues of the period".

Track listing

All tracks composed by

LP releases

CD releases

Personnel

– guitars, violin, percussion, keyboards, synclavier, voice *

– alto saxophone (''The Technology of Tears'') * Tenko Ueno – voice (''The Technology of Tears'') *

– turntables (''The Technology of Tears'') * Jim Staley – trombone (''Jigsaw'')

Production

*''The Technology of Tears'' – recorded BC Studios, June 1986; Noise New York, November 1986 to January 1987; Synclavier recorded in

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

, June 1986 with programming *''Jigsaw'' – recorded Noise New York, October 1986 *''Propaganda'' – recorded Noise New York, April 1987 *Digitally remastered at New York Digital, August 1987 *Cover images and photos – Pierre Hébert *Cover design – Peter Bäder

References

External links

Dance: Rosalind Newman
''The New York Times Archives, 25 February 1987 (''The Technology of Tears'' premiere)''. {{DEFAULTSORT:Technology of Tears, The 1988 albums Fred Frith albums RecRec Music albums Fred Records albums Albums produced by Fred Frith