The High Sign/One Week: Music For The Films Of Buster Keaton
With Frisell on acoustic and electric guitars, Kermit Driscoll on basses, and Joey Baron on percussion and drums, this disc offers a somewhat delirious blend of experimental jazz to accompany two Buster Keaton films,The High SignandOne Week. Frisell firmly believes that jazz is the best musical accompaniment to Keaton's brooding and often intellectual slapstick, but his compositions dare the listener to impose very modern sounds over comedies from an era associated more with quaint singsong ballads and playful ragtime. Many not initiated into jazz esoterica may find Frisell's militantly unmelodic improvisations anachronistic, distracting, and perhaps even too highbrow for Keaton's good-natured pop-culture spirit. The musicians may be having fun, but what about the potential movie audience?--Joseph Lanza