TROUT MASK REPLICA

Beefheart's early-era albums - Safe as Milk, Mirror Man, and Strictly Personal - twisted and warped the blues. Trout Mask Replica blew it apart. Given a sparse, raw production job by Frank Zappa, who occasionally pops in with bemused-sounding commentary and directions, the album is proof of two things: first, that Beefheart was a true avant-garde genius in terms of the songs he dreamed up for this album, and second that the relevant lineup of the Magic Band were geniuses when it came to interpreting and actually performing the material!

Although on the first approach the album sounds like an incoherent mass of sound, there are in fact subtle variations build into it; Moonlight On Vermont and Veteran's Day Poppy were recorded a while before the rest of the album, and are very slightly more approachable than the rest of the material, several songs consist entirely of spoken word poetry from Beefheart, and on "The Blimp" the Magic Band take a rest and the Mothers of Invention provide instrumental backing. On the rest of the tracks, the name of the game is strange, angular rhythms played apparently out of sync - but as you listen patterns begin to emerge, the different instruments blending in and out of each other and creating a sonic labyrinth that is, for those who enjoy it, a sheer delight to explore even decades after the fact. Not only the purest expression of Beefheart's personal vision, but a keystone album in RIO and avant-prog. Trout Mask Replica proved that music doesn't have to sound melodious to be moving; sometimes, it doesn't even need to sound like music.