原名Don Van Vliet的Captain Beefheart是现代音乐真正的改革者之一。他拥有惊人的四个半八度的音域、独树一帜的节奏感和荒谬主义的歌词,同时他还拥有一种邪恶的乐感,借此,他把自由爵士、三角洲布鲁斯、晚期的古典音乐和早期摇滚乐融合成了一种充满创造性和大胆想象的新音乐。虽然他从未接近过主流市场,也基本没卖出过几张唱片,但他所带来的冲击却是无法估量的,在后来的朋克、新浪潮和后朋克潮流中到处可以感受到他所留下的影响。
Trout Mask Replicash是乐队于1969年发行的双LP唱片,被认为是实验音乐(Experimental Music)的重要作品之一。
这张专辑在滚石杂志选出的500张历代最强专辑中排名第58位。
Trout Mask Replica is Captain Beefheart's masterpiece, a fascinating, stunningly imaginative work that still sounds like little else in the rock & roll canon. Given total creative control by producer and friend Frank Zappa, Beefheart and his Magic Band rehearsed the material for this 28-song double album for over a year, wedding minimalistic R&B, blues, and garage rock to free jazz and avant-garde experimentalism. Atonal, sometimes singsong melodies; jagged, intricately constructed dual-guitar parts; stuttering, complicated rhythmic interaction -- all of these elements float out seemingly at random, often without completely interlocking, while Beefheart groans his surrealist poetry in a throaty Howlin' Wolf growl. The disjointedness is perhaps partly unintentional -- reportedly, Beefheart's refusal to wear headphones while recording his vocals caused him to sing in time with studio reverberations, not the actual backing tracks -- but by all accounts, the music and arrangements were carefully scripted and notated by the Captain, which makes the results even more remarkable. As one might expect from music so complex and, to many ears, inaccessible, the influence of Trout Mask Replica was felt more in spirit than in direct copycatting, as a catalyst rather than a literal musical starting point. However, its inspiring reimagining of what was possible in a rock context laid the groundwork for countless future experiments in rock surrealism, especially during the punk/new wave era.