Review: Trout Mask Replica
By Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band.
"A squid eating dough in a polyethylene bag is fast and bulbous. Got me?"
How you react to that statement is probably a good indication of how you will react to the album Trout Mask Replica.
This is easily the weirdest music I have ever bought and possibly the weirdest music (when it is music) I've ever listened to. Suppose you had a bunch of musically talented friends with a recording studio in their basement, and a random assortment of instruments, and a few songs they were working on for their album. Late one evening everyone gets mentally altered and goes down to the basement and does stuff for a couple of hours with the recording tape running, and when your friend who owns the studio finds it he does a little bit of post-production, and, well, there you go.
This is actually one of the most famous of experimental rock music albums--along with Weasels Ripped My Flesh! and some of Frank Zappa's other stuff.
How does it score (scales 0-10, mostly)?
Musical Quality: Incomplete. A lot of this is, er, not really "songs". Some of it isn't music (I don't think).
Weirdness: 15. The gold standard for Weirdness. I can't even measure anything else on the Weirdness scale if I put Trout Mask Replica at 10.
Obscurity: 8. It's pretty out there.
Recommendation (Buy, Sell, Hold): Hold. I'm not sorry I bought it, but, well, it didn't inspire me to run out and get all the other Beefhearts.
"A squid eating dough in a polyethylene bag is fast and bulbous. Got me?"
How you react to that statement is probably a good indication of how you will react to the album Trout Mask Replica.
This is easily the weirdest music I have ever bought and possibly the weirdest music (when it is music) I've ever listened to. Suppose you had a bunch of musically talented friends with a recording studio in their basement, and a random assortment of instruments, and a few songs they were working on for their album. Late one evening everyone gets mentally altered and goes down to the basement and does stuff for a couple of hours with the recording tape running, and when your friend who owns the studio finds it he does a little bit of post-production, and, well, there you go.
This is actually one of the most famous of experimental rock music albums--along with Weasels Ripped My Flesh! and some of Frank Zappa's other stuff.
How does it score (scales 0-10, mostly)?
Musical Quality: Incomplete. A lot of this is, er, not really "songs". Some of it isn't music (I don't think).
Weirdness: 15. The gold standard for Weirdness. I can't even measure anything else on the Weirdness scale if I put Trout Mask Replica at 10.
Obscurity: 8. It's pretty out there.
Recommendation (Buy, Sell, Hold): Hold. I'm not sorry I bought it, but, well, it didn't inspire me to run out and get all the other Beefhearts.
Posted by sealionii on
Thursday November 29, 2007 at 9:57pm