Fred Frith Solo Guitar Noisescapes

I’m a songwriter, composer, multi-instrumentalist (bass, keyboards, violin) and an improviser performing mostly on various permutations of the electric and acoustic guitar. Occasionally I use crude home-made string instruments of my own invention. I learned how to compose in rock bands, starting with Henry Cow in 1968. This meant writing for and with people that I knew, and then arriving at the final result through a collective rehearsal process. During the Henry Cow years I fell in love with the recording studio and its endless possibilities. I embrace the idea of the “work” as an unfinished and constantly mutating entity. Collaboration, improvisation, sculpting sound in the studio, and treating composition as an open-ended process remain central to how I make music.