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Bill Frisell: Unspeakable

 A l b u m   D e t a i l s


Label: Elektra Nonesuch
Released: 2004
Time:
 72:37
Category: Folk Jazz
Producer(s): Hal Willner
Rating:
Media type: CD
Web address: www.billfrisell.com
Appears with:
Purchase date: 2016
Price in €: 1,00





 S o n g s ,   T r a c k s


[1] 1968 (Frisell) - 4:35
[2] White Fang (Frisell/Willner) - 5:39
[3] Sundust (Willner) - 2:36
[4] Del Close (Frisell/Liljestrand/Willner) - 5:03
[5] Gregory C. (Frisell/Willner) - 5:38
[6] Stringbean (Frisell/Liljestrand/Willner) - 5:57
[7] Hymn for Ginsberg (Frisell) - 2:24
[8] Alias (Frisell/Liljestrand/Willner) - 7:56
[9] Who Was That Girl? (Frisell) - 4:50
[10] D. Sharpe (Frisell) - 4:10
[11] Fields of Alfalfa (Frisell/Bernstein/Liljestrand/Walter/Willner) - 3:38
[12] Tony (Frisell/Scherr/Wollesen) - 3:37
[13] Old Sugar Bear (G.A.Grant/Liljestrand/Willner) - 7:10
[14] Goodbye Goodbye Goodbye (Frisell/Lasry/Willner) - 8:58

 A r t i s t s ,   P e r s o n n e l


Bill Frisell - Guitars, String Arrangements
Hal Willner - Turntables, Samples, Producer
Tony Scherr - Bass, Guitar
Kenny Wollesen - Drums
Don Alias - Percussion
Steven Bernstein - Trumpet, Horn Arrangements
Briggan Krauss - Baritone Saxophone
Curtis Fowlkes - Trombone
Adam Dorn - Synthesizer, Editing
Jenny Scheinman - Violin
Eyvind Kang - Viola
Hank Roberts - Cello

Karina Benznicki - Production Supervisor
Eric Liljestrand - Audio Engineer, Editing, Engineer, Mixing
Noah Simon - Audio Engineer, Horn Engineer
Darren Frank - Assistant Engineer
Matt Marrin - Assistant Engineer
Margit Pfeiffer - Assistant Engineer
Greg Calbi - Mastering
Eli Cane - Production Assistant
Barbara de Wilde - Design
Gregg Schaufeld - Editorial Coordinator
Noah Woods - Illustrations

 C o m m e n t s ,   N o t e s


2004 CD Nonesuch - 7559-79828-2



2004 Grammy Award Winner.

Celebrated guitarist Bill Frisell’s 19th Nonesuch record, Unspeakable, was released in August 2004. The groove and soul–based collaboration with renowned producer Hal Willner takes a freewheeling, idiosyncratic approach to the modern art of music sampling. As a jumping-off point for the record, Frisell and Willner employed obscure songs and sounds culled from vintage vinyl records for their own sonic explorations, borrowing and integrating choice fragments into original compositions. Willner, Saturday Night Live’s music supervisor, scoured NBC’s well-stocked record library for inspiration. The pair sampled the ideas and/or moods from the various tracks Willner had unearthed; in most cases, Frisell elaborated on the original, creating new songs and often going in a totally different direction from the sample.

With Willner manning the turntables, Frisell is accompanied by frequent collaborators Tony Scherr (bass), Kenny Wollesen (drums), and Steven Bernstein (trumpet, horn arrangements). Don Alias and Adam Dorn are featured on percussion and synth, respectively. Frisell also wrote string arrangements, which are played by the 858 Strings: violinist Jenny Scheinman, violist Eyvind Kang, and cellist Hank Roberts.

“Making this record with Hal was the fulfillment of a 20-plus year dream for me,” said Frisell. Early in their careers, Frisell and Willner collaborated on Willner’s groundbreaking 1981 multi-artist tribute to Nina Rota’s music for Fellini films. Although he had never heard the guitarist, Willner gave Frisell his first solo recording opportunity, based on a recommendation from a mutual friend—the drummer D. Sharpe, for whom a track on Unspeakable is named—on Amarcord Nino Rota. The pair crossed paths often over the next two decades, collaborating on Stay Awake, a record of Disney music, and Weird Nightmare, a tribute to Charles Mingus. Frisell also performed as part of the Willner-produced tribute concerts for Harry Smith and Randy Newman at UCLA.

Other Willner-produced records on which Frisell is featured include Marianne Faithful, Allen Ginsberg, David Sanborn, and Gavin Friday projects. The two also recorded music to accompany William Burroughs’s reading of Naked Lunch. More recently, they joined forces on the scores for Gus Van Sant’s Finding Forrester, as well as Wim Wenders’ Million Dollar Hotel with Daniel Lanois, Brian Eno, and Bono. During the Hotel sessions, Willner heard Frisell playing dance music and got an idea for a unique joint venture, something the genre-bending Frisell had never recorded before. As Willner says, “We wanted to make a beautiful, fun record that still was a Bill Frisell record. I think we succeeded.”

© 2016 Nonesuch Records



Some artists spend an entire lifetime within a narrow genre, honing their skill and working at stretching the boundaries of that style, while others transcend all definitions and labels, creating a music that defies categorization. Such is the case with guitarist Bill Frisell, who over a twenty-five year career has contributed to everything from the Nordic cool of Jan Garbarek's quartet to the downtown edge of John Zorn's Naked City. On his own records he has explored diverse landscapes including the urban sprawl of Before We Were Born and the American heartland of Good Dog, Happy Man .

Always the sum of his parts, Frisell has constantly managed to bring forward past experiences into new contexts, never more so than on his new release, Unspeakable , which finally teams him for a full album with producer Hal Willner, with whom Frisell has worked in the past on projects as varied as the Mingus project Weird Nightmare and Stay Awake , an album of Disney film music. The result is a recording that stretches the imagination farther than anything Frisell has done to date and defines him as an artist who has created a personal musical landscape that is less about what is being played and more about what that playing evokes.

With a core group including long-time musical partners, bassist Tony Scherr and drummer Kenny Wollesen, Frisell continues to explore rhythmic grooves. But with the addition of a three-piece string section, three-piece horn section, percussion and Hal Willner's turntables and samples, the textures available are richer than ever before. Frisell builds rich layers of guitars, and continues to mine the "everyone solos and nobody solos" ground that has been the trademark of his work for many years. But collaborating with Willner has created a whole new level of sonics.

As a starting point for compositions that are sometimes Frisell's alone, but more often collaborative efforts with Willner and/or engineer Eric Liljestrand, Frisell and Willner looked to an extensive library of obscure songs and sounds culled from vintage vinyl recordings. Sometimes the compositions fit neatly within the context of the samples, other times Frisell digresses, moving things into completely unknown territory.

Frisell has always been an extremely visual writer and player, but his teaming with Willner has resulted in his most cinematic effort yet. Yes, there are elements of the Americana that has obsessed Frisell so over the past few years, on tracks including the tender "Goodbye Goodbye Goodbye," but equally present are the world music concerns that have captured his attention in more recent times, on "1968," and the most manifest soul that Frisell has ever shown on "White Fang" and "Del Close."

That Frisell has chosen to use his guitar as a sonic paintbrush rather than a simple purveyor of chops means that there are those who will be disappointed; but for those who prefer their music to tell stories and create vivid images, Unspeakable is another high point in an already significant body of work.

John Kelman - August 22, 2004
© 2016 All About Jazz



At last, Bill Frisell is veering off in a new direction, heading out towards what could best be described as heavy funk for thinking truckers. He's remembering how to crank up his amplifier again, and this disc reels with a satisfying degree of distorted, mangled, steaming, twanging, squealing and grumbling licks.

Bill's key collaborator this time is producer Hal Willner, who manages to spread his influence into every nook of the recording studio. Willner's speciality has been to guide wise gatherings of like minds through skewed tributes to maverick composers. He's tackled Kurt Weill, Ennio Morricone, Charlie Mingus and Nino Rota, with the latter project being his first Frisell meeting, back in 1981.

Willner has also been reborn as a turntablist, though he's not much of a scratcher. He prefers to infiltrate loops, samples and complete chunks, delving into his extremely obscurist boxes, concentrating on highly rarefied records from the 1950s and '60s.

Frisell is using the complete Sex Mob quartet (Steven Bernstein, Briggan Krauss, Tony Scherr, Kenny Wollesen), as well as Curtis Fowlkes (trombone), Don Alias (percussion)and Adam Dorn (synthesisers). The 858 Stings plush out the sound even further, featuring the familiar hands of Jenny Scheinman, Eyvind Kang and Hank Roberts.

The striding dance grooves are redolent of the 1960s and '70s, combining mean cracked leather with kitsch polyester sheen. The strings pour on soothing coolant as Frisell remembers his youth, his horn buddies headbutting hard below the belt. There's a direct danceability, but Frisell's tunes are decorated with subversive noises. If this feels too heated, there are five numbers that strip down to gentle duo interaction or have a more opened-up, string-dominated terrain. Creaky pylons and insect chirrups fill the periphery; Frisell is beginning to be unpredictable again...

Martin Longley - 2002
BBC Review



This collaboration between Bill Frisell and Hal Willner, the producer, turntablist and Saturday Night Live music supervisor, yields intriguing but mixed results. That Frisell should choose to put his postmodern country twang through a hip-hop filter isn't surprising-he's been a combiner of sounds and idioms from the beginning. But his is not a predictable mind, and Unspeakable is not a shallow hop onto the sampling bandwagon. (Frisell and Willner first collaborated in 1981, on Willner's Nino Rota tribute.)

There are four sonic elements in play: a core band with Frisell, bassist Tony Scherr and drummer Kenny Wollesen; turntables and samples courtesy of Willner; a guest horn section with Steven Bernstein, Briggan Krauss and Curtis Fowlkes; and the 858 Strings: Jenny Scheinman on violin, Eyvind Kang on viola and Hank Roberts on cello. Don Alias plays percussion on six cuts, and Adam Dorn (aka Mocean Worker) gets credit on synth and additional editing. Willner produced, Eric Liljestrand engineered (and cowrote five tunes).

What emerges is an arty mix of the organic and the synthetic, with Frisell's slippery clean tones and distorted growls and cries in the middle. It's nice to hear the live strings, which lend a yearning quality not only on groove tracks like "1968" and "Del Close," but also on Frisell's minimalist sketches, "Hymn for Ginsberg" and "D. Sharpe." The presence, here and there, of Sex Mob's entire lineup is not incidental; their brash eclecticism couldn't fit this music more comfortably. On Willner's laid-back "Sundust" and the cowritten duet "Gregory C." the Frisell/Willner chemistry is on full display. "Who Was That Girl?" is a marvelous piece of borderline camp, a '70s fantasia with a vaguely Caribbean twist.

Without fail, Unspeakable's grooves are infectious. As a compositional whole, though, the album doesn't always hold one's attention.

David R. Adler - January/February 2005
© 1999–2015 JazzTimes



With the exception of 2003's Intercontinentals, Bill Frisell had been playing it pretty safe for some time, sticking to his own personal vision of variations on the Americana theme (with nearly all of those albums being produced by Lee Townsend, by the way). Well, a change of producers often means a change of pace, and teaming up with eclectic producer Hal Willner for Unspeakable seems to have gotten the creative juices flowing again. Their working relationship goes back a long ways, all the way back to the Amarcord Nino Rota tribute from the early '80s. The use of a string section on more than three-fourths of the tunes already adds a different flavor to this album, but the fact that Frisell and Willner seem to have taken inspiration from the sounds of classic soul music is what really sets this apart from others in the Frisell catalog. Not only that, but Frisell's delays return in a more prominent role and he offers up some of his fiercest playing in years. There are a handful of introspective pieces that feature just the strings and guitar, with some slight sonic embellishments from Willner. The majority of the tunes, however, sound something like Bill Frisell scoring the music to Superfly! The soul grooves are tough to miss, but with this cast of players, it comes off like some cinematic offshoot of soul music. The grooves are fantastic, and Frisell really rises to the occasion, bringing back the delays, nasty distorted tone, and ugly harmonics that have been largely absent from his more recent releases. There are still lots of lovely sounds, but it's great to hear him stretching out a bit more again. Tony Scherr and Kenny Wollesen have not only served as Frisell's rhythm section in the past, but they also play together in Sex Mob. Sometimes aided by Don Alias, they really drive the tunes, with the strings and occasional horns punctuating the melody and Frisell's guitars floating all over the place. Willner's use of turntables and samplers adds some great sounds to the mix, sometimes adding an almost exotica flavor. It's all quite accessible, but fans with delicate ears may be put off by some of the noisier moments on the album, like the keyboard (?) sound on "Stringbean" or the guitar solo on "Old Sugar Bear." Other fans will be delighted to hear such a glorious din on a Bill Frisell record again. After so much of a similar thing, it's just great to hear Frisell being pushed in a new direction (and quite a fun one, at that). Recommended.

Sean Westergaard - All Music Guide



Stylistic shifts are nothing new in the career of Bill Frisell, who changes musical directions more often than Madonna. In fact, he even covered a Madonna song once. Unspeakable continues that tendency as Frisell teams up with Hal Willner, a willful musical eclectic. The two have worked together on collaborative projects including tributes to Nino Rota, Walt Disney, and Charles Mingus. Willner, who is also the turntabulist here, orchestrates a landscape of turntable spins and space jams using generic library production discs for much of his source material. '60s Dragnet jazz horns and orchestral Twilight Zone stylings lend the modern sound of Unspeakable a strangely nostalgic hue. Frisell finds himself in a landscape of Ligeti-like strings, bongo percolations, and Ghanian tribal calls, most of it super-charged by the rhythm team of bassist Tony Scherr and drummer Kenny Wollesen. Their funky beats lay the terrain for Frisell's angular crossfire solos, but he can also wax sweetly nostalgic on "Hymn for Ginsberg" for guitar and string trio. Bill Frisell is filed in jazz, but he continues to be a genre unto himself.

John Diliberto - Amazon.com



Unspeakable is a 2004 album by American jazz guitarist Bill Frisell, his 22nd album overall and his 17th to be released on the Elektra Nonesuch label. After several often languorous albums emphasizing country, folk and blues music, Unspeakable was something of a new direction for Frisell, emphasizing R&B/funk rhythms, extensive sampling from unusual vinyl records, and some of Frisell's most dissonant guitar work in years. The album features performances by a core band of Frisell, Hal Willner on sampler and turntables, bassist Tony Scherr, drummer Kenny Wollesen, and percussionist Don Alias. Scherr plays second guitar on one song, and on another the band is joined keyboardist Adam Dorn. Several songs feature a horn section (Steven Bernstein, Briggan Krauss, and Curtis Fowlkes) and/or a small string section (Jenny Scheinman, Eyvind Kang, and Hank Roberts). Unspeakable won the Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Jazz Album in 2005.

The Allmusic review by Sean Westergaard awarded the album 4.5 stars stating "It's all quite accessible, but fans with delicate ears may be put off by some of the noisier moments on the album, like the keyboard sound on "Stringbean" or the guitar solo on "Old Sugar Bear." Other fans will be delighted to hear such a glorious din on a Bill Frisell record again. After so much of a similar thing, it's just great to hear Frisell being pushed in a new direction (and quite a fun one, at that). Recommended.".

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