SLEEP DIRT

Supposedly, the planned title for this Zappa album - part of the Lather treasurebox - was "Hot Rats III". If that's true, I suspect it was an attempted marketing move (or a truly uncharacteristic lack of ideas) on Zappa's part - this album is no Hot Rats, dwelling in a decidedly different realm from the light, airy jazz fusion that characterised that album (or its first sequel, Waka/Jawaka).

For a while appreciation of the album was hampered by the fact that most readily-available editions included a misguided remix job imposed by Zappa years after the fact, adding quasi-operatic vocals about a woman in love with an evil spider to some of the songs (apparently cast-offs from his failed musical Hunchentoot) as well as making the weird decision to strip out all of Chester Thompson's drumming in favour of drum overdubs by Chad Wackerman. Fortunately, the 2012 round of Zappa remasters restored the original version of the album, allowing its virtues to shine forth a bit better.

Opening track Filthy Habits is almost adjacent to some of the stuff King Crimson had been doing at the time in terms offering sinister, dark guitar soundscapes. Flambay is a sort of Zappa take on Martin Denny-style easy listening, which flows into Spider of Destiny, blending the "dark soundscape" and "easy listening" approaches of the prior two tracks together in a unique blend which the overbearing vocals on the remix obscured, and in turn leads into Regyptian Strut, which offers us the sort of pomp and circumstance that was suggested by some parts of The Grand Wazoo - or, for that matter, Peaches In Regalia on Hot Rats, which is where the link may have suggested itself to Zappa. Time Is Money is a brief little delivery mechanism for a neat guitar solo, as is the more acoustically inclined title track; then we finish with the epic fusion journey The Ocean Is the Ultimate Solution.

On the whole, the return of the original mix to easy availability allows Sleep Dirt to give a better accounting of itself. There's absolutely nothing wrong with Chester Thompson's drumming here and I don't get why Zappa felt that overdubs were needed, and whilst I can appreciate his desire to salvage something of Hunchentoot, I think in the wake of works like Thing-Fish we can admit that musical theatre wasn't necessarily Zappa's strongest suit. Though most of this also appears in Lather, not all of it does (especially if you have the 2012 release which trims off the bonus tracks to reflect Zappa's original intention for it), and I think benefits arise from keeping this material together due to its stylistic closeness, which makes this viable as a standalone album too.