Henry Kaiser - "Nazca Lines"

(5/13/2016, Fractal Music)
Nazca Lines

Track Listing:
  1. Introduction
  2. Vulture
  3. Rectangles
  4. Shark
  5. Flower
  6. Spider
  7. Hummingbird
  8. Iguana
  9. Alcatraz
  10. Parrot
  11. Tower
  12. Monkey
  13. Dog
  14. Spiral

This album consists of 22 freely improvised solos on 18 different acoustic guitars. In the past 5 years, Henry Kaiser released seven solo discs that consist of long (70-80 minute) electric guitar solos.  In this latest release, he explores the short solo guitar format, with solos wherein the mind of the listener can hold the beginning, middle, and end of the musical stories in one mentation. In the tradition of Derek Bailey’s 1975 classic album IMPROVISATION on the Italian CRAMPS label, these solos are short virtuoso expressions of extended guitar language and technique. More significantly, they are expositions of many new approaches to musical narrative. Akin to short story format, as opposed to novels, the improvisations are concise, otherworldly, and surprisingly electric-sounding for being played on acoustic guitars. Imagine Henry Kaiser, Derek Bailey, Robert Peter Williams, Morton Feldman, Robbie Basho, Joseph Spence, Toru Takemitsu, Karlheinz Stockhausen, D’Gary, Teta, and Masayuki Takayanagi sitting around a campfire for a crazy acoustic guitar jamboree, that is then transfigured through a sonic-kaleidoscope, inter-dimensional, space warp, and you can begin to guess what this recording sounds like.