Frank Zappa: Dance Me This

The title track of Frank Zappa’s 100th (!) official—and last—album, Dance Me This, also includes his final, and still immediately recognizable, guitar notes. The centerpiece is “Wolf Harbor,” a seafaring five-part suite written for some ambitious dance ensemble (hence the album title). Synclavier science fiction and endlessly inventive composed percussion mark this both as a return to his earliest drum interludes with the Mothers, as well as something of a sequel to the contemporary-classical extremities of Civilization Phase III. Tuvan throat singers add low-pitched gutterality to “Goat Polo” and the algorithmically (but no less entertaining) extracted closer, “Calculus.”