Cheap Civilization Phaze III (Music) (Frank Zappa) Price

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Customer Reviews of Civilization Phaze III

You've never heard anything like this
Originally released a year after Zappa's passing was his life-long project "Civilization Phaze III". The idea for this project started in the 1966 with Lumpy Gravy, and with the help of the Synclavier, Ensemble Modern et al, and lots of compositional experience, Zappa managed to finish this [his greatest] musical achievement close to 30 years later.
He has called "C.P.III" an "opera-pantomime", which tells a story about several characters who live in a grand piano. The characters who speak are recoded while sitting underneath a grand piano with weights on its sustain pedal to get an "echo" effect which makes it sound as if they actually were inside. The characters recorded in '66 include members of the Mothers of Invention, and the characters recorded in '91 include Zappa's daughter Moon Unit, actor Michael Rappaport, Ensemble Modern's arranger Ali N. Askin and pianist Hermann Kretzschmar.
The music is performed mainly on the Synclavier, but also--in the second act--by Ensemble Modern who incidentally performed throughout the "Yellow Shark" album (1993).
This is the best sounding album I've ever heard. When I first heard this album five or six years ago, I could not believe that science had developed as far as for music to sound this pure and clear. The feeling of listening to this music through a good sound-system is indescribable. If I'm not mistaking, the 18-minute long "N-Lite" was recorded on 200+ audio tracks. With that in mind, the sound-engineering is truly amazing. Hats off to everyone involved.
This album won, in 1995, a Grammy for best packaging (idiotically not for the music).
If anyone claims that Frank Zappa was not a musical genius, then play this set of discs for them, and watch their chins drop to the floor. If you have any trouble finding "C.P.III", then try Barfko-Swill online; they've been able to offer the title ever since its release.

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Continuation of Lumpy Gravy
This might be the last thing Frank Zappa worked on. It was completed shortly before his death, but wasn't released until several years later. It won a Grammy award for best CD packaging.

Most reviewers give this 5 stars. But then they say things, like "not for the passive listener", "demanding", "hard to listen to" and that you have to listen to it 10 times before you can appreciate it.

This is a combination of talking and "orchestral" music, very similar to Lumpy Gravy. About 30% of the album is talking. The talking is about 2 to 3 minute interludes between music tracks. Half of the talking is from the 1967 Lumpy Gravy sessions. It continues some of the conversations that started on Lumpy Gravy. The other half of the talking is from 1991. A big portion of the talking sounds like a Cheech and Chong act, only not funny. Zappa sounds a lot like Tommy Chong in certain parts. It is all inane stuff about piano people. I can't imagine wanting to hear this stuff more than once.

The music is along the lines of the "orchestral" music that Zappa has done on other albums, like Yellow Shark and Jazz From Hell. It is very complex, but discordant in parts.

Most of the music is solo material with Zappa on Synclavier. This is an electronic instrument that can sound like a whole orchestra. There are also sections done with a real orchestra.

There are some great stretches of music, especially in the beginning. But other portions are inaccessible noise. But the real problem is that the music is continually broken up by the conversations. With a CD burner, you could pull out about 40 minutes of extremely good, complex, experimental music.

Zappa is one of the most important artists in rock history. Some of his music is majestic. Some of it is just entertaining. And others push the music fan. And sometimes his experiments just fail.

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Brilliant and absorbing!
Civilization Phaze III is a testament to Zappa's genius. It is not intended to conform to mainstream popular music. For those who are interested in this form of Zappa, look elsewhere. Joe's Garage, perhaps.

Parts of this work were in development for some 10 years prior to their completion. Zappa never really "completed" it; he just stopped working on it because he passed away. Even days before his death, he spent time at the Synclavier tweaking and tweezing parts, constantly molding the work to his liking.

Conceptually, the construction of each piece is brilliant! At the time, Zappa owned one the largest collections of digitally sampled sounds in the world, which was sold after his death for a tidy sum. It was from this catalog of sounds that Zappa would compose. The Ensemble Modern was added at length to this catalog of sounds, during the development of the Yellow Shark. Portions of these samples can be heard on Buffalo Voice and elsewhere. As Zappa composed on the Synclavier, elements of his score were assigned to sampled sounds, and the entire composition was digitally constructed using Zappa's score as a road map. This form of composing is entirely Zappa's creation and it is ingeniously conceived.

While other reviewers may comment that these works are "unlistenable" or they cannot imagine listening to them more than once, keep in mind, this is one person's opinion. I have listened to the compositions in this work countless times (well over 100) since its release, and have most of it memorized. It is one of the most brilliant compositional works I have ever heard, within the realms of electronic music.

Civilization Phaze III wraps-up the musical life of Frank Zappa. For those who are familiar with Zappa and his musical career, one can hear the numerous classical composers who influenced Zappa. Listen close enough and you will come to new insights on life and music from those speaking from within the piano. Many compositions contain parts that are unplayable by humans. Some rhythmic parts are so complex they open our ears to new sounds we have never heard before, much the same way Conlon Nancarrow's compositions did for the player piano.

Nancarrow's works performed pieces that were impossible to play on the piano. Conceptually, they were brilliantly thought out. Musically, they are fascinating works you will never hear elsewhere simply because they are impossible to perform. Nancarrow's approach influenced Zappa. Nancarrow applied his approach to a mechanical instrument, the player piano. Zappa applied his approach to a digital instrument, the Synclavier.

It's difficult to capsule the essence of this release into one review. It is true to state that this work stands on its own merits for what it is. If it means something to you, then it is of great value. If it holds no value to you, then it means nothing at all.

Listen to Amazon's samples of this release. If what you hear remotely interests you, there's bound to be some nuggets of enjoyment within the work for you to enjoy and explore. If this occurs, the work will expand in meaning with further listening.

If you enjoy Lumpy Gravy and Jazz from Hell, you are guaranteed to love this disk. If you're still not sure, listen to the sound samples to these disks and compare them to the samples of Civilization Phaze III, then take a chance and acquire this work. Judge it for yourself and make an intelligent decision... that's what Zappa would have wanted you to do.