Friends & Enemies
Looking back on guitar history during the 1970s and 1980s, it seems like Henry Kaiser and Fred Frith are separated by a generation. After all, Frith got his steely nerve fromHenry Cow, who formed in the early 1970s, and Kaiser seemed to step into his own as a brilliant musician fully formed in the late 1970s. The pair has always been tight--and close in both age and temperament--as this two-CD set demonstrates. Kaiser and Frith alternate squiggles and wiggles and string tickles here, giving lots of attention to the details of improvised abstractions. They also sink their picks into an assembly of song structures that sometimes verges on the absurdly bouncy and beat-driven, even when at the core of their sound the pair could spin into the ether with ringing, caustic finality. Frith loves to tinker with the actual guitar, altering the machine's ability to project the expected sounds. Kaiser, by contrast, seems perfectly seated when controlling the projections and mangling, tangling, and laying them in disconnected lines. If you're in need of two generously packed reams of guitar genius, Kaiser and Frith offer one of free music's best opportunities, and this is pinnacle work for both.--Andrew Bartlett