Civilization, Phaze Iii

Frank Zappa - Civilization Phaze III (2CD) (1994)
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© 1994 The Zappa Family Trust | CDDZAP 56
Rock / Experimental Rock / Modern Composition

Civilization Phaze III is the last album of new music Frank Zappa completed before his death in December 1993. It belongs to his corpus of "serious music." The composer has revisited the recordings he made in 1967 of various people talking with their heads inside a grand piano (with the sustain pedal depressed, it made quite a resonating room). These conversations were used in part in the 1968 LP Lumpy Gravy, but here Zappa (with the help of less limiting technology) restructured the comments of the "people living inside the piano" into a quasi-coherent plot. Basically, they are either outcasts or in self-exile from the outer world. They hide from a menacing reality. These spoken bits serve to tie together computer and orchestra music.

Frank Zappa - Civilization Phaze III (1994) [2CD] {Barking Pumpkin, UMRK 01}
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© 1994 Barking Pumpkin | UMRK 01
Rock / Experimental Rock / Avant-Garde / Comedy Rock / Spoken Word

Official Release #63. This is Zappa's masterpiece of electronic music, conceived, composed and performed on his Synclavier, a computer system for music composition and recording. Civilization Phaze III is an astounding work, taking Zappa nearly ten years to finish. Released posthumously, this 2 CD set is a testimony to Zappa the composer, containing the pure fruits of his imagination and the hard work he continued until his death in 1993. Continuing the story of the piano people from Lumpy Gravy (and utilizing much of the same tape source material for it's interludes) the album fulfills on the promise of his Grammy-winning Jazz From Hell, the first album released of his Synclavier music.

Civilization Phaze III is the sixty-third album by Frank Zappa, released posthumously as a double album on October 31, 1994. It was the first studio album of new material from Zappa since 1986's Jazz from Hell. The album marks the third part of a conceptual continuity that started with We're Only in It for the Money (1968), with the second part being a re-edited version of Zappa's 1967 album Lumpy Gravy. Zappa described the album as a "two-act opera", but in lieu of traditional recitatives and arias, it alternates brief spoken word passages with musical numbers created on a Synclavier using a combination of sampled and synthesized sounds. Much of the sampled material in the second half of the album was originally recorded by Ensemble Modern and other musicians to Zappa's specifications.

Frank Zappa - Dance Me This (2015) {Zappa Records ZR 20018}
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© 2015 Zappa Records / ZFT | ZR 20018
Rock / Experimental Rock / Avant-Garde / Jazz Rock / Synclavier

Official Release #100. The LAST album by Frank Zappa. The last album that guitarist Frank Zappa worked on prior to his death in December 1993 will finally be released this June. Titled Dance Me This, the LP is considered the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer's 100th and final official release, ending a legacy that began with the Mothers of Invention's landmark 1966 album Freak Out! In talking to Guitar Magazine prior to his death at the age of 52, Zappa described his final LP as "a Synclavier album called Dance Me This, which is designed to be used by modern dance groups. It's probably not going to come out until next year," the Guardian reports. The album was ultimately shelved indefinitely, and while a steady stream of posthumous releases and reissues have satisfied Zappa fans in the following decades, Dance Me This was all but forgotten until Zappa's widow Gail Zappa began hinting at the final album's eventual arrival in 2011.

Frank Zappa - The Yellow Shark (1993) [CD+SATRip] + Everything Is Healing Nicely (1999)
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© 1995, 1999 Rykodisc / The Zappa Family Trust | RCD 40560 / UMRK 03
Classical / Modern Composition / Avant-Garde / Experimental

During his last years, Frank Zappa concentrated on his "serious music," trying to impose himself as a composer and relegating the rock personality to the closet. His last two completed projects topped everything he had done before in this particular field. The Yellow Shark, an album of orchestral music, was released only a few weeks before he succumbed to cancer (the computer music/sound collage album Civilization Phaze III was released a few months later). This CD, named for a plexiglas fish given to Zappa in 1988, culls live recordings from the Ensemble Modern's 1992 program of the composer's music.

Frank Zappa & The Mothers Of Invention - Lumpy Gravy (1968) + We're Only In It For The Money (1968) {2012 UMe Remaster}
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© 2012 UMe / ZFT | ZR 3836 / ZR 3837
Rock / Experimental Rock

Lumpy Gravy, Frank Zappa's first solo album, was released months before the Mothers of Invention's third LP (even though its back cover asked the question: "Is this phase two of We're Only in It for the Money?") and both were conceptualized and recorded at the same time. We're Only in It for the Money became a song-oriented anti-flower power album with one contemporary/musique concrète/sound collage hybrid piece by way of conclusion. Lumpy Gravy collaged bits of orchestral music, sonic manipulations, spoken words, and occasional pop ditties into two lumps of 16 minutes each.

Frank Zappa - Feeding The Monkies At Ma Maison (2011) {Zappa Records ZR 20012}
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© 2011 Zappa Records / The Zappa Family Trust | ZR 20012
Rock / Experimental Rock

Official Release #90. Frank Zappa's pioneering work on the Synclavier gave him the freedom to hear works that he considered too challenging for live musicians to perform, though Ensemble Modern worked hard enough to be able to play several of his works for the instrument in concert before his death in 1993. Since the technology behind the Synclavier was evolving along with Zappa's music, approximately doubling its processing and memory capacity every two years, it gave the composer greater tools to work with to realize his compositions. Feeding the Monkies at Ma Maison was compiled for an LP by Zappa prior to his death, but never mastered and released, though some of the music on this CD was further edited and eventually issued in altered and brief form.

Lumpy Gravy, Frank Zappa's first solo album, was released months before the Mothers of Invention's third LP (even though its back cover asked the question: "Is this phase two of We're Only in It for the Money?") and both were conceptualized and recorded at the same time. We're Only in It for the Money became a song-oriented anti-flower power album with one contemporary/musique concrète/sound collage hybrid piece by way of conclusion. Lumpy Gravy collaged bits of orchestral music, sonic manipulations, spoken words, and occasional pop ditties into two lumps of 16 minutes each. This album presents Zappa's first recordings with a decent orchestra, the 50-piece Abnuceals Emuukha Electric Symphony Orchestra. His symphonic writing was very much influenced by Stravinsky and Varèse…