Customer Reviews

Zero Tolerance for Silence

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(14)

 

 

It's hard not to be amused by the hysterical (both definitions of the word) reviews that fans write about albums that stray from the expected output of a musician. "Zero Tolerance for Silence", a radical depature from the nonchalant background music usually released by Pat Metheny, elevates the blood pressure of his fans to emergency room levels. This 40 minute solo-guitar noise-fest has the amps turned to 11 and the bird fully flipped. Don't expect melody, harmony, rhythm; this is more about tone color, overtones, abrasive noise and swinging a baseball bat to expectations and convention. Metheny might be sending a big "f***-u, I can do this too," to avant-gardists who regularly disdain his typical output (hard not to respect that) or maybe he's trying to court them.

It is rumored that Thurston Moore persuaded Geffin, Metheny's record company at the time, to release this unpalatable serving at a time when noisy bands like Nirvana were cash-cows. It sounds as if Metheny were trying to pull off his own attempt at Keiji Haino, Sonic Youth, Neil Young's "ARC", or whatever underground noise Thurston Moore was slipping him on the side for inspiration. It's no reference point or high-water mark in the history of voluminous noise-improv, though it is an amusing footnote to 90's commercial music in the wake of its "Alternative" bubble. Knitting Factory has released a 3CD set of insouciant improv that Metheny did with Derek Bailey, Greg Bendian and Paul Wertico-it's also likely to infuriate Metheny fans expecting his usual output.

It's not surprising that there are critics who can't, or at least don't, seem to understand the aesthetic of these pieces (especially someone who claims to have 3 music degrees and might need a 4th). I believe they contain an enormously welcome degree of beauty and freedom -- texturally, rhythmically, melodically, harmonically.

It appears that worship of the conventional is a trap that mauls the possibilities of what exists outside of our limited experiences, and this album is not conventional by any means. Yet there is a convention in this recording which is personal to Pat Metheny, whether it was an intended output, coalesced into abject musical anger in the heat of disgust, or evolved into a perverted joke's punchline.

One doesn't justifiably say that Derek Bailey is full of crap and a musical preschooler, or Eugene Chadbourne is sloppy and doesn't know anything about how to get a decent tone out of an axe. Roscoe Mitchell - Have you ever heard his tirades of notes, the several minutes of all-out circularly breathed otherworldly soprano sax bliss? He's Mick Barr of the reeds. There are others, as well, who are scrutinized under the microscope of convention, yet are masters whose advanced souls holographically express in everything they play; their dynamics, hidden polyrhythms and melodic patterns, musical "accidents."

Pat Metheny, likewise, holds a mastery which derives its own personality, and in that regard, exudes something multidimensional and way deeper than the surface noise that some people can't get beyond. He has, as does anyone, a license to change mind about what convention is, in any given moment, and flow with it, even if it flows backwards.

I think it would be great if Pat Metheny would more frequently offer a recording of equally daring creative expression, to demonstrate his evolution of aesthetic.

It's all there; the perfect beauty in the malformation, the extreme bliss of a frenetic interpretive dance. This album goes where no other goes.

IMHO, those that say it goes in the trash don't seem to get the point.

I just listened to "Zero Tolerance for Silence" and laughed myself a six-pack. I had no idea Pat Metheny suffered from these kinds of insane nervous breakdowns! ...how is this Pat METHENY!?
...it almost sounds like an outlet of angry energy in addition to all the beautiful music he'd previously made with the Pat Metheny Group and his solo album "Secret Story" which was recorded with the London Symphony Orchestra just before this recording.
...okay, but seriously... (laugh, laugh, laugh) ...the first 18 minutes of the album are just two VERY distorted guitars playing over, under and around each other. There's one in the left channel and one in the right. By panning you can listen to one at a time if you like. This is the case throughout the album, though a third guitar (also distorted) joins for a while later on to add a bit more harmony.
There are no "real" (or usual) forms used here - nothing that comes close to blues or rhythm changes, nor are there any constant tempos or even time meters - this is not music you snap your fingers to.
"Zero Tolerance" displays a TOTALLY different side to Metheny than ANYONE could have EVER imagined. I don't think even a hardcore Metheny-fan could tell that this is him playing. Unusually enough he uses a lot of bending within minor pentatonic and blues lines, and doesn't use a wide range of dynamics - most of his playing here is extremely raw (before and after pictures of his guitar should be displayed.)
I don't blame anyone for thinking this is complete bulls hit because if anything is FAR OUT and EXTREME it would be THIS album...just because I happen to like (or at least appreciate the idea of anyone trying to create) something that is new and different while personal doesn't mean that I think it's an ingenious work of art (hence the three stars.) I cannot swear that this won't, after a lot of listening, someday be one of my favorite albums, but as for now it's way too much information at once to fully appreciate and/or comprehend.
The recording (overdubs 'n' all) was done in one day, and I don't recommend it to people hoping for another "Secret Story."

First of all, let me tell you that you should not buy this if you don't like the idea of utterly discordant music. There is very little semblance of jazz to this record; it is like nothing metheny has ever done. If you didn't know that when you bought it, then you should have done your homework - if you read one review of this before buying it and you will know it is not the usual, sonorous metheny experience!

i have a passing fondness for metheny, but i like noise/improv better than jazz. When i heard that these two divergent sounds met i thought i might have a listen.

It's interesting because Metheny has taken a rather unusual approach to the noise-guitar sound. Most ppl (taku sugimoto, kevin drumm) pretty much stay away from 'notes' altogether and just get sounds out of their instrument to create music focussed on timbre, texture and dynamics. Metheny on the other hand really is creating 'melodies' and intertwine and interpentrate in ways i would not have expected. It makes sense that he would treat this style in that way, but it took me a minute to figure out what he was doing. At first it felt like "oh this jazz cat is just fooling around with noise, he doesn't know what he's doing" because if you listen to short segments of a given track snipped from beginning, middle, end, they sound kinda similar.

If you listen to a piano sonata in the same way (little bits from about the song), the SOUNDS are the same as you parse through the track. However, the structure of a piano sonata is not an articulation of timbres, it is an articulation of notes - the same is the case here.

the point is it's a little different from other noise albums i've heard. But metheny is, needless to say, an amazing musician, and I have to hand it to him that he did a good job x_x

i had read in multiple reviews throughout the internet that this album was metheny's most experimental album. i was super stoked. i dug his stuff with ornette coleman on song x and i was very into his album with derek bailey (though i'm glad their collaboration was a one time thing because bailey is simply better on his own). i like his experimental side alot more than anything else he does, i can't deny that. "faith healer" from trio live is even my favorite pat metheny song, but when i got this album, i was very disappointed.

don't get me wrong, i absolutely love this style of music, just not the way pat does it. i am a sun ra fanatic and i'll listen to about any free jazz or improvised anything within the human hearing range, but this was just too unfocused.

it sounds as though metheny was listening to a few albums from the japanese noise scene, maybe side 2 from john frusciante's niandra lades and usually just a t-shirt (which is very beautiful and highly recommended if you can find it; definitely not red, hot, chili, or peppery in any way, just great, soulful music), some sun ra, and a whole lot of derek bailey and decided to try it himself. you can tell he recorded the album in a few hours max with just a guitar and one amp setting (a very thin, displeasing tone that does not resemble his signature sound in any way, but is instead spiked with heavy distortion) and laid down a ton of noise-oriented overdubs. there is no accompaniment besides the overdubs and even those share very little sonic relation to anything else going on throughout any of the movements. this is definitely an album which rides the thin, blurry line between genius and crap. i sincerely feel that while metheny is a true genius of our time, the album is straight crap. there are a few moments where the noise comes through with a sense of sheen brilliance (especially in part 5 when he breaks out with "the roots of coincidence" and an acoustic guitar) and some of the arrangements emerge as being very clever in a childlike, innocent sort of way. overall, it may be worth a listen, but definitely not your money.

the bottome line: there are many people who can play this music with great success, however, pat metheny is not one of them.

Kinda like U2 and 'Pop', etc., Pat Metheny became such a big name and could tell his label 'this is what I want to do' and they had no choice but to release it. Note that it's been OOP for QUITE a while. I, of course, a devoted Pat fan bought my copy fresh off the truck for full price and some weeks later sold it at a second-hand record store for a buck. Pat Metheny is a VERY, VERY talented man and I have been a fan since 1978, but sometimes I think his head 'swells' a bit....and someone needs to bring him down. This is NOT music.....don't look for a 'Secret Story', a 'Phase Dance' (although I think some phase SHIFT is in here)....think 'Offramp' meets 'Pretty Scattered' played backwards.

I am utterly entranced by this album. For me it paints a certain picture of the world: crowded, high-speed, claustrophobic, hyper-stimulated, with many sources of information coming simultaneously--like multiple TVs and radios at once. At times it's bluesy, exuberant, angry, grungy, kick-ass, melancholy. I don't find it tongue-in-cheek as some seem to. I think it's a sincere effort by an artist of immense range who is willing to take risks. For me it works. There is an emotional coherence, and ultimately has the sense of journey that all of Pat Metheny's work does. By the end I feel I've been taken places I wouldn't have found on my own.

Wow. When I first started listening to this album, I knew the huge amounts of controversy behind it. It is just Pat, playing over himself in huge amounts of disonance and noise. Part One to me just seemed like the same noise over and over again for almost twenty minutes, and I didn't get much listen out of that. Parts Two-Five however seem much more interesting to me. I am an avid Metheny fan, and although I have no degree in music, I understand it very well. I have played jazz trumpet for eight years and listen to the rest of his works as a means of escape from standard, strait-ahead jazz. His manipulation of rhythmic meters and styles that set him apart from the rest of the jazz world are just facinating to me, along with his outstanding ability to pump out an amazingly musical improvised solo.

This work however, is unlike anything I've ever heard. I'm not sure if you would call it jazz or rock or anything for that matter. It's at such an extreme to the musical spectrum that it is in its own way... facinating. It's definitely not something that I would listen to every day, but the disonance and occasional out of tune notes along with the melodies and countermelodies of raw, noise improv are still cool at times.

I read that this was Pat's way of saying "F-you" to his record label... whos contract forced him to come out with a new album of sorts that he did not want to do. Despite its craziness, I still believe that Pat Metheny is a genius, and even at his rawest and angriest form, still pumps out a very interesting and unique album.

I don't recommend this to avid Metheny listeners, but to those who are bent on completing their collection and finding what this album is all about... I say go for it.

Please ignore the reviews of the uptight jazz-cats, they won't understand this one. Take it from Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth who said that this album was "the most radical recording of the decade."

Also, keep in mind that this is NOT an improvised album. These are musical pieces that he charted out three years before entering the studio to record it!

Give this a chance. Forget anything you know about Metheny. This is a symphony of chaos.

He enters a labyrinth of thuzz here and he takes his sweet time getting out. What luck for us! There are hints at the anxiety of "Song X," that classic slab he did w/ Ornette & also a few doses of whatever he's cooking on that Sign of 4 collab w/ Derek Bailey. Incredible interior logic at work, as well as an explorer's sense of plunging headlong into the unknown tongues. Yeah, what a shocker that the simps who love his smooth jazz albums hate this one, where Metheny actually does interesting things with music ideas. The smooth-jazz creeps ask why he did this -- I ask why he ever did that dreck w/ Lyle Mays when he had this in his back pocket.