Accidental (album)

Accidental
Studio album by Fred Frith
Released	2002 (2002)
Recorded	December 1995 – January 1996
Studio	Studio Jankowski, Stuttgart, Germany
Genre	Experimental rock
Length	39:25
Label	Fred (UK)
Producer	Fred Frith
Fred Frith chronology
Freedom in Fragments (2002) Accidental (2002) Prints (2002)
Music for Dance series chronology
The Previous Evening (1997) Accidental (2002) The Happy End Problem (2006)

Accidental (Music for Dance Volume 3) is a studio album by English guitarist, composer and improvisor Fred Frith. It is the third of a series of Music for Dance albums Frith made,^[a] and was recorded between December 1995 and January 1996 at Studio Jankowski in Stuttgart, Germany. The album was released on CD in March 2002 on Fred Records and was the first release in Frith's archival release program on the record label.

Background[]

Accidental was commissioned in 1995 by the British choreographer for the dance piece "Rogue Tool", with funding provided by the British Council through the British/Israeli cultural initiative, BI Arts. "Rogue Tool" was premiered by the Batsheva Dance Company in Tel Aviv, Israel in February 1996.

Frith constructed the music on Accidental using a principle he called "block-melodies" ^[1] and he incorporated random events, or "accidents", into the compositions, including "found sounds" and field recordings, to trigger new patterns. Frith explained the background to the making of the album:^[2]

I'm fascinated by accidents. When I do solo improvisations I think of myself as being in continuous dialogue with the unexpected, and its always dynamic. Do I ignore this, do I embrace it, do I integrate it, do I keep my distance? When making this music I was constantly using random elements like radio tuning and trying to frame them in metric or harmonic structures.

Reception[]

Bill Tilland of the BBC wrote in a review of this album:^[3]

It's fairly standard practice for dance companies to commission "new music" composers to write (and sometimes perform) material for dance performances, and nearly all such work has moments of purely musical interest. But none that I can remember leaves such a strong overall impression as this one. Accidental is a real tribute to Frith's imaginative faculties.

Track listing[]

All tracks composed by Fred Frith.

Personnel[]

• Fred Frith – guitars, violin, keyboards, percussion, samplers, voice

Sound[]

• Extraneous material taken from recordings of demonstrations in New York City and Washington, D.C., and random radio tunings
• Engineered by
• Edited and mastered by and Fred Frith, July 2000
• Design and artwork by

Notes[]

References[]

External links[]

• Accidental at AllMusic