Some day, I’m going to figure out the difference between avant garde jazz and avant garde classical. Here, with Michael Ammann’s “phonetics” and Gunter Horn’s “manipulated guitar” you get tones of electronic effects, buzzes, beeps, burps, chugs, chirps, dings, dangs, fripps, flipps, and other onomatopoeiac sounds. Is there a rhythm? Is there a melody? Is there harmony? Are there notes? Is it music? Is it a modern version of those old sound effect albums? Hmmmm.
On another note, pardon the pun, what you may expect from The Mozart Influence is not what you get. Voices by Charles Coleman, Chanda Rule, Milica Paranosic team up with strings, horns and rhythm to make you wonder if this is done in cheek or not. Guitarist Gene Pritsker remixes “Leck Mir Den Arsh Fein Recht Schon Sauber” while “The Empereor Responds to Mozart’s Request For A Raise” is reminiscent of those old “PDQ Bach” albums that were the rage a generation ago. A three part “MozarTease” gets stripped down, and the clever word play on “SarastroTurf” and “MoZartina” feel like they were put together at a late night party. “M’invitasti e son venuto”