Zero Tolerance for Silence
| Zero Tolerance for Silence | ||||
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| Studio album by Pat Metheny | ||||
| Released | 1994 | |||
| Recorded | December 16, 1992 | |||
| Studio | Power Station, New York City | |||
| Genre | Avant-garde jazz, free improvisation | |||
| Length | 39:14 | |||
| Label | Geffen | |||
| Producer | Pat Metheny | |||
| Pat Metheny chronology | ||||
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| Professional ratings | |
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| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| AllMusic |
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| Entertainment Weekly | B- |
| The New York Times | unfavorable |
| Robert Christgau |  |
Zero Tolerance for Silence is a controversial 1994 album by American jazz guitarist Pat Metheny, released on Geffen Records. The album consists of music performed on overdubbed electric guitars, with "Part 5" featuring an acoustic guitar part. Rather than Metheny's standard repertoire of jazz fusion, Zero Tolerance for Silence consists of frantic, overdriven, intricately-textured soloing with occasionally distinguishable blues-like melodies.
The album caused a division of opinion among listeners, who had not expected the usually accessible Metheny to venture into the avant-garde. Some fans felt that the album was a mistake, and fan forums have occasionally pressured Metheny into disowning the recording. He has declined to do so, although Geffen quietly allowed it to fall out of print at the end of the 1990s. In a 2008 interview, Metheny was asked to respond to an internet rumor that the album was conceived as a "'poke in the eye' to Geffen Records":
That rumor was started by a journalist who was seriously not listening to the album. All it would have taken was a quick phone call [to me] to find out that that wasn't the case. Besides, I would never do something like that. It isn't the way I operate, which I think has been pretty self-evident over the years. That record speaks for itself in its own musical terms. To me, it is a 2-D view of a world in which I am usually functioning in a more 3-D way. It is entirely flat music, and that was exactly what it was intended to be.
The album cover carried an endorsement by Thurston Moore, guitarist for Sonic Youth, hailing Metheny as a "master". Critics have generally been less kind. Ben Watson of the music magazine The Wire called it "rubbish," and AllMusic's Tim Griggs gave it 1.5 out of a possible 5 stars.
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Wikipedia