LIVE IN MOSCOW, PRAGUE AND WASHINGTON

Fantastic moments abound throughout this album, the first of (so far) four by two of the biggest names in Avant-prog and experimental music history. There are times during the over one hour worth of live improvised material on this disc, that Frith and Cutler make beautiful, unexpected, and absolutely delightful music, at least for those familiar with their hectic and unconventional style. The unfortunate thing is that there's a lot of "down time" throughout the album, in which, as improvisation is wont to yield, nothing particularly exciting or unheard of really happens. To hear the best music on this disc, sitting through a lot of less than great (at some times, dare I say even "mediocre") improvisation is required.

This is hardly a major problem and doesn't really affect the listenability of the album on the whole. And as I said, there are plenty of wonderfully creative moments on this album to warrant playing it multiple times, and the sound textures of the wide array of guitars that Frith plays are definitely worth hearing. But these two have done much, much better things in their long and storied careers. This is a rare non-essential piece to that puzzle.