PLAYS STANDARDS

Imagine that the craziest album ever was an album where all sorts of classics and standards of music from all sorts of cultures were reworked into an insane but perfect oblivion. Welcome to "Plays Standards", then. Industrial, noise, avant-prog, avant-jazz, the screams of a distressed and likely bonkers woman... it's all here to savour if you've got the guts. A killer sax and drums take on "El Derecho de Vivir en Paz" soon gives way to the aforementioned woman's first appearance, amongst noise and a now berserked sax. Going on, the woman shows her insanity, sounds often breakdown into frenzy or get cut off, there's a cute little section focused on a bath, and sheer quirkiness and horror happen by turns and even at the same time. This is the best of all the avant-garde boiled into an excellent soup, and then used to smother the title standards. Sounds include what sounds like a freight train rushing by, synths suspisously sounding like grinding saws, and guitar gone horribly wrong. Most of those appear in a song that then gives way to surf rock that, once again, has sax to back it. Imagine that. Zero's take on "Those Were The Days" features piano and horns that are in it for the laughs. Everything, in the end, works together; all the instruments, all the sounds, all the samples, all the riffs and breakdowns and sheer insanity. This is a long, hard, strange trip, but this has to be an apex of avant-prog. If avant is your jam, then welcome to your crowning masterpiece.

This is more of a jazz album rather than progressive rock. Even the name suggests it. "Playing standards" appears to be a typical jazz album making strategy. But this is a far cry from a typical jazz album. The sound is on the verge of heavy. Many parts sound like a collage of samples, although it's a carefully constructed illusion. Vocals are those crazy Japanese kind that you can hear on some of the Naked City's songs. Ground Zero take the melodies of some more or less popular songs that originally sounded pretty mellow, and make them extremely intense by using harsh sax variations, street noises, and other avant-garde techniques. Overall tone of the album is somewhat menacing. The original emotional charge of the "standard" melodies is intensified to the degree of paranoid frenzy. Definitely a masterpiece, a rare pearl, albeit somehow pretty obscure.

GROUND ZERO would be on that short list of bands that I find the most difficult of all. They released five studio albums during the nineties including that final live release in 1999. What they did that was quite different from most avant bands was to cut and paste at will. Even the three guests listed are referred to not as guests, but samples. And they use samples to a fault, including the abundant sound collages on display. I have their two final studio albums, both released in 1997. "Consume Red" as well as this very ambitious "Plays Standards" where they basically cover other artists compositions. These guys had a sense of humour.

So we get 18 composers listed who have had their music destroyed by this Japanese band, including laughingly Burt Bacharach(hello Roger Waters!) and John Philip Sousa(hello THE RESIDENTS!), along with some composers like Fred Frith and Bill Laswell who are actually cool. There are so many instruments listed that I have no idea. A couple of them play toys. The main man is a known turntable genius. There is a goat-hoof rattle. If I had that in my hand during one of my listens I no doubt would be bouncing that off my head in frustration.

So 3 stars out of respect for those in the know when it comes to difficult avant-garde music. I don't know. I do know I will never play this again.