| Review scores | |
|---|---|
| Source | Rating |
| AllMusic |   [1] |
| All About Jazz |  [2] |
Allies (Music for Dance Volume 2) is a studio album by English guitarist, composer and improvisor Fred Frith. It is the second of a series of Music for Dance albums Frith made.
Background
In 1989 Frith was commissioned by choreographer Bebe Miller to write a suite of music for the Brooklyn Academy of Music's "Next Wave" series. Frith composed and recorded the suite, Allies, in October 1989 with musicians Tom Cora and George Cartwright, with whom Frith had been collaborating for a number of years. The percussion on the recording was provided by a drum machine that Frith had programmed. Allies premiered at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in November 1989.
In August 1995 Frith began preparing Allies for release on an album, but was unhappy with the computerised drumming. He asked drummer Joey Baron of Naked City (in which Frith also played bass guitar) to re-record the drum tracks (six years after the original recording was made). The resulting mix was released by RecRec Music in 1996.
Track listing
All music is composed by Fred Frith.
| No. | Title | Length |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | "Rifka" | 9:36 |
| 2. | "Small Mercy I" | 4:25 |
| 3. | "Nenad" | 7:52 |
| 4. | "A Rock and a Hard Place" | 6:17 |
| 5. | "Davor and Dzeneta" | 6:24 |
| 6. | "Small Mercy II" | 6:02 |
Personnel
- Fred Frith – bass guitar, guitar, violin, keyboards, drum machine, tape manipulations
- Tom Cora – cello
- George Cartwright – alto saxophone
- Joey Baron – drums
Production
- Martin Bisi – recording engineer
- Benedykt Grodon – mixer
- Bebe Miller – producer
Re-issues
In 2004 Fred Records issued a remastered version of the album, which Frith dedicated to Daniel Waldner: "For Daniel, with love and gratitude". Waldner was the founder of RecRec Music (Frith's record label in the 1990s) who had died in a mountain climbing accident in 1995, precipitating the collapse of the label in 1997.[3]
References
- ^ Lewis, Uncle Dave. "Allies". AllMusic. Retrieved 2011-06-20.
- ^ Taylor, James. "Fred Frith: Allies (2005)". All About Jazz. Retrieved 2015-11-24.
- ^ "Recommended Records, Zürich (RecRec)". Border Music. Retrieved 2007-01-30.