Review Summary: The audience sits inside of a big piano and they listen to it grow.
While Frank Zappa has always been celebrated for his quirky and complex rock music, it's no secret he always wanted to be considered an avant-garde, classical composer. Shortly before his death, he managed to fulfill this goal with the "Yellow Shark" concerts, where Zappa finally found an orchestra that played his music with the skill and precision he desired: The Ensemble Modern. The music Zappa prepared for orchestras and composed on his Synclavier maintained the quirky side of his rock music, but the mood was much somber and sinister; a stark contrast from his better-known music with cheery marimba arpeggios, lively guitar solos and the general mayhem that made Zappa’s rock music so much fun.
But one doesn’t listen to orchestral Zappa to have fun. They are here for a musical adventure.
Civilization Phaze III is the last album Frank Zappa worked on before his death in 1993. The album was released in 1994 in an unfinished state (only the first disc was stated to be complete), not that you’d guess it looking at the packaging of the album. The artwork is dazzling, the CD booklet comes with stage directions for every track, as Civilization Phaze III advertises itself as an opera pantomime. It’s a mixture of orchestral Synclavier music and skits of people talking inside a piano. Zappa assembles these voice clips to form a loose story that depicts a grim world that the piano people are hiding from, plagued by nationalism. Your mileage will vary with these dialogue tracks, as they can be rather silly and difficult to follow along.
The main meat of the album is the music. Zappa fully taps on the capabilities of his Synclavier here, sampling the Ensemble Modern’s instruments and transforming his workstation into a full-blown orchestra. The music often sounds lush and convincing unlike some of Zappa’s earlier Synclavier ventures. But don’t let “Put A Motor In Yourself” dictate the flow of the album; this early highlight is the most cheerful and energetic the album ever gets. The rhythm track in particular is full of nervous and manic energy as the song feels like a constant battle between the wind section and keyboards.
From there on out, the album reveals its true colors. The mood quickly darkens and becomes much more oppressive. The music often feels fractured, dissonant and confrontational; even during the passages where the music floats around without any hints of percussion, the tension and dread carried by the soundscapes can be crushing. Melodies come and leave at any given moment and the music shows very little warmth. The busier tracks like “Amnerika” depict a busy society working itself into exhaustion and futility, the horn section becomes so chaotic you can picture a giant line of people coming in and out of factories, their heads cut off, yet desperate to get their meager paychecks. On the other side of the spectrum, “Xmas Values” carries a minimalistic yet dreadful atmosphere. It sounds like it’s trying to celebrate something but forgot what was there to celebrate or why. The album reaches its climax with the disc 1 closer, “N-Lite”, a 19-minute behemoth divided in many segments, running the entire gamut of sounds and moods, starting with worry and unease before culminating in a maelstrom of rage.
Unfortunately, Disc 2 doesn’t feel nowhere near as essential. It’s nowhere near as fleshed out and many of the compositions sound like early sketches hinting at something bigger, but can’t quite get there. Some of these segments were filled in by the Ensemble Modern because many of the songs here were not completed. The piano people sketches, which thankfully didn’t get much in the way on the first disc, take much more room here and introduce a brand new cast of characters that were not present on the first disc. Since these dialogues were recorded at a later date with different people (the original dialogues were recorded in 1967, these new ones were done in 1991), they sound wildly different, don’t interact with the original cast in any way and destroys the very little cohesiveness and narrative the piano people tried to set up initially. And sadly, the music often doesn’t come to the rescue.
The final leagues of the album thankfully manage to capture back the mood the rest of the album carried out. “Dio Fa” sounds like a mass celebrating the end of the world, as the haunting Mongolian throat singing keeps the listener in a trance while the rest of the instrumentation crushes them in a sea of despair. “Beat The Reaper” is not as strong than “N-Lite” and goes on for a little too long, but the song is exactly as the title implies; it’s the final chance to save oneself from an imminent death, but the struggle itself is futile as death eventually wins. The cryptic “Waffenspeil” shows the world outside the piano as is; a deadly battlefield where humans are constantly fighting and shooting at each other. The fighting gets more and more intense until a plane flies over, apparently gassing everyone to death. The faint sounds of nature and birds singing quietly take the album to a close.
The first disc of Civilization Phaze III is essential listening to adventurous listeners ready for a challenging album, but Disc 2 is far more disposable and only manages to find its footing near the end. Nothing about this album is easy listening but it’s worth trying out just to see what Zappa was up to after he finally hung up his guitar for good. With the Yellow Shark concerts, he had the chance to show the world he was a serious orchestral composer and succeeded. This is the follow-up to this quest and one could wish prostate cancer didn’t take him this early so he could have fully finished this ultimate project that is Civilization Phaze III. We still have a full disc of Zappa at his most avant-garde ever and the compositions show a level of maturity one would not typically associate with Zappa. Despite a weak Disc 2, there’s no album like Civilization Phaze III and there never will be one.
