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A new collection of previously unreleased guitar solos culled from numerous live performances, Trance Fusion is a sterling representation of a stunningly gifted guitarist of incomparable skills and stark individuality: the late, great Frank Zappa. Relatively few are familiar with Frank's "spontaneous compositions" on guitar, the blinding display of musical sparks that flew whenever he lead any one of his myriad superhuman sidebands into parts unknown. Though he seemed most comfortable when he was carving out jagged unpredictable lines, crossing up rhythm, key, tempo, melody, theory and logic, Frank was also capable of sketching remarkably fluid guitar lines of surprising sensitivity and beauty. Sometimes, as in "Bowling On Charen," he manages all this within the space of a few minutes. In the continuously fluctuating Venusian vamp "Scratch And Sniff," Frank's guitar gurgles and scrapes like a corrosive substance. In "Diplodocus," Frank's persistent polyphony and pertinacious polyrhythms continually bully the beat all over the playground like a six-string flame-thrower. During "Butter Or Cannons," Frank's caustic caterwauling sets fire to the very ground his band is dancing on and ultimately edges them all into an un-tethered frenzy. Guitar connoisseurs, Hendrixian scholars, pundits of both noodle and crunch, if you haven't heard Frank Zappa's "Trance Fusion" you only think you know what the electric guitar is capable of. (RH) Grade: A+
