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Title: Lighten Up Please
Review: I once heard that Frank Zappa was inspired by Varese, so I decided to give him a listen. Now I understand why I never really took to the Mothers of Invention. Varese's composing style seems very heavy handed. Generally the brass and percussive pieces are really (and too often) over-layered and over-the-top, and his use of percussive toys is, all to often, way over done. The electronic experimentations seem disjointed and simple and don't really seem to fit well and the vocals seem a bit silly. Having said these things, three pieces (11-12 minutes of sound out a 140 minute-plus 2 disk box) did work very well for me - Ionisation, Density 12.5 and Dance For Burgess, which were all on disk 2. So now I program these as an enjoyable little 3 piece suite.
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