CD, стоящие на полке рядом : Rock (Alternative)      

Recorded January 1998 At Orange Music

In 1983, Bill Laswell's Celluloid label released a minor masterpiece by a downtown power trio called Massacre; the group consisted of Fred Frith on guitar, Laswell on bass and Fred Maher on drums. The album was called Killing Time, and it was a brilliant combination of quirky but composed avant-gardisms, experimental noise and post-punk funk. That album remains one of the great monuments of the downtown scene, right up there with A Taste of DNA and No New York. Fifteen years later, Frith and Laswell reunited (replacing Maher with Charles Hayward) for a second shot at the same magic, and didn't quite succeed. But that doesn't mean that Funny Valentine isn' t great, just that it isn't quite as great as Killing Time. It opens on a weak note, with the sprawling and noisy but somehow anemic "Leaf Violence," then steadily improves. By the third track, Laswell and Hayward are laying down a propulsively swaying groove and letting Frith do his inimitable voodoo on top of it. "Ladder" flirts with a funk/reggae feel; "Talk Radio" and "Further Conversations with White Arc" show the sense of humor that animated so much of Killing Time. And "Well-Dressed Ripping Up Wood" seems to be, er, rock & roll. Overall, you wish there was a little more discipline and a little less length, but not much more discipline and not too much less length.

All Music Guide