Customer Reviews

Sign of Four

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

This 3 CD set contains two live recordings and one studio recording. The first live set, "Statement of the Case" featuring the 9-part "A Study in Scarlet", is the least successful. For the most part, it's a wall of noise; there's evidence of interaction between the players but it's just too loud to hear the ideas being developed and explored.

The second disc, "The Science of Deduction", was recorded in the studio and finds the musicians branching out with the instrumentation using all manners of electric and acoustic guitars and percusion, both conventional and non-conventional. This disc has its share of noise but it also has subtlies and nuance - even a hint of (abstract) melody. The third disc, "The Balance of Probability" - another live set - also has more variety in the instrumentation. You can actually hear the players bouncing ideas off each other.

Note to the uninitiated: Derek Bailey's music is not for everyone. Metheny is the marquee name on this recording; if you couldn't handle "Song X" or "Zero Tolerance for Silence" then this isn't for you.

This isn't "Noise" as so many have labeled it here (for that, see Merzbow or Daniel Menche). This is 'ecstatic' free improv - a chance for Metheny to expand his avant-cred. by dipping his toe in with some established improv collosi. Bendian/Wertico are great here (though poorly recorded, mostly), and Bailey is (again, mostly) buried behind Metheny's self-conscious swaggering. I am a card-carrying Bailey fan (read his book: Improvisation: its nature and practice in music; you'll understand), and I actually have a soft spot in my heart for Metheny, so I was VERY intrigued by this most unlikely of meetings. Believe it or not, but Metheny turns out to be the player least intent on 'listening' to his partners, his tortured lines running rough-shod over Bailey's glisses and thunks. For better Bailey, try "Aida," for better non-representative Bailey, try "Playbacks." For better Metheny, try "Song X" w/Ornette. For better Bendian, try Bendian/Cline "Interstellar Space revisited." Or, if you're really in search of 'noise,' try Borbetomagus!

"The Sign of 4" is an unusual collaboration which finds the brilliant fusion-guitar hero Pat Metheny teaming up with British avant-garde guitarist Derek Bailey. Together with drummer/percussionists Paul Wertico (from Pat Metheny's Group) and Gregg Bendian, they have created one of the most notorious sets in improvisational music.
"The Sign of 4" is a 3-CD set which is recommended to be listened to in small doses. Many may find themselves shutting the music off after the first couple of minutes of the first disc. However, with a little bit of patience and knowledge of what lays within, this album can be quite an adventerous journey if you're willing to sit through it all.
The first disc was recorded live at New York's Knitting Factory in late 1996 and is subtitled "Statement of the Case". It consists of one 63-minute piece entitled "A Study in Scarlet". Although the piece is divided into nine sections, there is very little variation in this long epic. The piece consists mostly of Metheny screeching out dissonant lead-lines while Bailey hammers out distorted harmonics, sustained notes and feedback. Wertico and Bendian compliment the two guitarists cacophonous playing with suitable abstract percussive attacks.
Disc two is subtitled "The Science of Deduction" is consists of studio recordings. The music on this disc is not as harsh as disc one but is still abstract nonetheless. Metheny's playing is not too far removed from what he did on his infamous noise CD "Zero Tolerance For Silence" while Bailey's playing is done in his trademark style of odd harmonics, pulling and snapping strings and playing behind the bridge of the guitar. Bendian and Wertico use a vast array of regular percussion instruments as well as employing household objects (bedposts, egg beaters, plastic packing material, measuring tape) into the music.
Disc three is subtitled "The Balance of Probability" and is a continuation of the live performances heard on disc one. Once again, the music is full of harsh dissonance with lots of feedback and loud percussion. Unlike disc one, there is some variation in these noise-scapes. Metheny uses his 42-string guitar for a different texture on one piece and uses a guitar-synth on the closing track "In Quest of a Solution" which builds to a massive wall of indicipherable white noise towards its conclusion. Believe it or not, after the finale of this last piece, the audience roars with a thunderous applause which shows that there is a following for this type of exploritory music.
Most people who are accustomed to Pat Metheny's melodic and straight-forward material should be warned before picking up this CD-set. This is NOT your grandmother's Metheny. For the close-eared and close-minded, this album will not appeal to anyone looking for pleasant melodies, steady rhythms and simple structure. This music is dense, complex and face it, for most people, it will just sound like a barrage of noise. However, for those who appreciate adventerous, exploritory and experimental music, "The Sign of 4" is an amazing journey into the realms of pure sound. Whatever the motive was behind this album, Pat Metheny, Derek Bailey, Paul Wertico and Gregg Bendian successfully pulled out all the stops with "The Sign of 4". In terms of sailing uncharted waters, this album is a complete success.

Interesting discussion, at least from those who gave this Metheny offering an honest listen, instead of bailing out after 2 minutes. Buyer beware to those who didn't look before they leaped. But why not consider the whys of it all? Everyone has two sides of their brain, logical and artistic. Music, like any other art form, should appeal to both or a listener won't listen for long. While this music isn't comfortable to listen to for many, it does challenge us to come to terms with just what separates music and noise, and how both brings us to an emotional response and feeds our imaginations.

Someone once said that you don't have to like everything, but you owe it to yourself to be educated about it and at least appreciate it. Agree or disagree, but don't be ignorant. Metheny, Bailey, and many other artists who have the guts to attempt this kind of sound have a huge creative capacity, but MAINLY because they have exercised their collective improvisational muscle over the years (including episodes like this, all you "traditional" Metheny fans). Surely we all have to credit Metheny for having "paid his dues" with more accessible music, and for having the good judgment necessary for taking this kind of risk.

Whether they succeeded in breaking new ground artistically or not will remain to be seen. Yes, Sign of 4 is challenging to listen to, but THAT is just what they had in mind, I think. It no doubt was challenging for them to play as well. I admire them for their vision and efforts.

I got this album having had two rather sharply differing reactions to Metheny's "outside" experiments: _Zero Tolerance for Silence_ is to my mind simply agonizing noise with little to recommend it, while _Song X_, his fierce encounter with Ornette Coleman, is absolutely terrific. On the whole I'd have to give thumbs down on this one, though: 3 discs of virtually unrelieved howling (actually, the one studio disc has a few quieter moments on it). Oddly enough it's Bailey, the resolute avantgardist, who's more nuanced & subdued (& thus often hard to hear clearly), while Metheny is throughout in maximalist mode. The (double) drum solos come as something of a lull, believe it or not. The recording quality is pretty terrible, though I'd guess this sort of stuff is tough on engineers too. All I can say is: if you want far-out Pat, head to _Song X_ instead. For Bailey, you're likely to have better luck with many other discs: I might recommend the cataclysmic encounter with the metal guitarist Buckethead on volume 3 of _Company Week '91_.

I notice that just about everyone comes to this with some sort of predisposed idea of what it should be. Metheny and Bailey actually BOTH sound quite unlike any of the other ways that I have ever heard them, which is in itself an accomplishment for both of them. However, Bailey does relies extensively on the techniques that he always draws from, while Metheny, as he has on several other occasions, seems to invent an entirely new approach here. In fact, this record has nothing to do with Zero Tolerence for Silence or Song X in his playing style, any more than any of his trio records sound like each other or like this or like his regular band. It seems that in the avant world, it is almost required to diss Metheny because he is so successful at playing in other more "conventional" environments, but I have to say that hearing him conjure up such an unprecedented (for him) wall of sound was exhilirating to me. And it made me appreciate even more his capacity in other settings to play the most simple melodic phrases with the impact that he does. He is a true improviser in ways that many of the avants just simply are not. The question I found myself asking was this; Metheny stepped into Baileys textural world very successfully for almost 3 hours of great music. Could Bailey function successfully in the areas of detailed harmony and melody that Metheny has done such great work in over the years? Somehow I find myself doubting it. The two drummers are also fine here, as is Bailey. But it is Metheny who propels and defines here. He is simply amazing on these discs, for his ability to blend and transform while shaking the stars from the sky with a new kind of logic and adventure that we have not really heard before on the instrument in this kind of a setting.

This is great and life changing music. I saw two of the shows at Knitting Factory and they changed my life. I believe this is a document that will be more clearly understood in the future and more widely appreciated. But that is not important. Popular success has nothing to do with music, art, life. If you are open minded, there is nothing else like it. And play it as loud as you can. I have never experienced anything louder that these shows. Just brilliant art all around. A wake up call.

This is actually the first Metheny cd I have purchased, but I had been familiar with Bendian from his duet with Cline on their reinterpretation of Coltrane's "Interstellar Space." That cd was great, but I must confess that I bought this cd primarily because of all the one-star reviews given below. All the descriptions seemed fantastic. "This is too loud," "There is no melody," "It is too dissonant," etc. etc. And, for the most part, they are completely right, and it is absolutely fantastic. Honestly, who can resist the temptation of a 60 minute, dissonant, free-form and collective improvisation? If you like this, check out both versions of the above mentioned "Interstellar Space," as well as "The Major Works of John Coltrane," on Impulse and "Piece for Jetsun Dulma," by Thurston Moore on Victo records.

Listening to it now, inspired to put in a quick review. Very nice and soothing, great to work by (for me, at least.....). puts you at the center of the chaos, in a spot of complete Zen tranquility (although maybe if you were to deviate by a millimeter either way from that spot, your head would explode, I don't know....)

Derek Bailey's guitar always sounds like him (I especially like his electric guitar work, with all the feedback & shredding & stuff); Pat Metheny's guitar often sounds like violin or cello or something else. And the drums and percussion are all over the place everywhere like a blanket of splatter. Very nice.

I am perhaps unusual as I came to this album primarily as a Derek Bailey fan who admires Pat Metheny as a musician but who can't take most of the rather pleasant noodling that most of his followers think of as jazz. What I like about Metheny, more than his skill and imagination, is his perversity, the demon inside him that made him record 'Song X' and 'Zero Tolerance for Silence' - the first one of those magical dates that sometimes happen in jazz history, the second more of a gesture than a convincing musical statement but fun nonetheless. This album is maybe not quite as great as the former but it's better than the latter.

The usual charge against this kind of thing is that it's 'self-indulgent'. The implication here is that musicians ought not to do whatever they want; that the job of a musician, even a jazz musician, is first and foremost to play what the audience wants, or thinks it wants. In fact, jazz has always been at its most creative when musicians have sought to do exactly what they wanted. (As Frank Zappa put it: if you can't indulge yourself, who can you indulge?) The tonalities on this record are nothing that will frighten off anyone who's listened to and liked Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern or Coltrane's 'Ascension'. Metheny's fans should praise him for having the courage to go up against one of the most terrifyingly original and gifted guitar players of the 20th century and not making a fool of himself in the process. (Any Metheny fans who hated this album and who assume that Bailey couldn't play 'straight' should check out his gorgeous albums 'Pieces for Guitar' (early stuff) or 'Ballads' (late stuff) on Tzadik.) You'd think, from some of the reviews, that people were being forced to listen to this album. It's not even like it's expensive, for a triple CD.

Both guitarists are on fine form, even if Metheny is a bit garrulous on the first disc (he does love his pitchshifter). It almost makes up for the early death of Sonny Sharrock. (Now there's somebody Metheny might like to do a tribute to.)

This is a hugely enjoyable record, maybe not enjoyable in the same way that Metheny's beautiful album of duets with Charlie Haden is enjoyable (or the way Bailey's 'Ballads' is enjoyable), but it's full of fire and wit and smoke and originality. You just can't hum it. Well, not most of it. If you think that music is for doing something else to, this is probably not for you (although I'm listening to it as I write this). If you want music always to sound like something you've already heard, you won't like this - and you probably don't really like jazz at all. If you like listening to four great musicians having an extended go at making fresh music, then this is right up your street.