Jazz Articles about Henry Kaiser

About Henry Kaiser

Album Review

Simon Barker, Henry Kaiser, Bill Laswell, Rudresh Mahanthappa: Mudang Rock

Read "Mudang Rock" reviewed by Claudio Bonomi

by Claudio Bonomi
October 23, 2018

Henry Kaiser aggiunge un'altra tessera alla sua ricerca etnomusicale sullo sciamanesimo coreano iniziata con Invite the Spirit nei primi anni Ottanta. Questa volta ad accompagnare il chitarrista californiano, paladino di un'avanguardia che da sempre centrifuga gli idiomi più disparati, dalla fusion alle musiche tradizionali, c'è un trio coi fiocchi formato dal bassista Bill Laswell, anch'egli esploratore irriducibile di sonorità orientali avendo suonato con il combo di percussionisti coreani SamuNori, il batterista australiano Simon Barker, studioso di ritmi e storia delle ...

Album Review

Henry Kaiser - Ed Pettersen: We Call All Times Soon

Read "We Call All Times Soon" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
June 2, 2018

Listening to these experimental guitar duets may relegate daily life to an out of sight, out of mind condition. Thus, world-renowned avant-garde guitarist Henry Kaiser is also noted for his TV and film scores. And adventurous genre-hopping artist Ed Pettersen uses an 8-string Weissenborn-style lap steel guitar to help fuse an oscillating soundtrack for one's psyche on this captivating studio effort. Whereas, Kaiser's 19-string harp guitar work generates a constant flow of reverberating soundscapes, as the duo renders a spellbinding ...

Album Review

Henry Kaiser: Friends & Heroes: Guitar Duets

Read "Friends & Heroes: Guitar Duets" reviewed by Roger Farbey

by Roger Farbey
October 22, 2017

There a real Smörgåsbord of pieces on Henry Kaiser's Friends & Heroes: Guitar Duets. They are stylistically varied improvisational vignettes ranging from the eccentric “Three Languages" with Fred Frith to the heavy electric blues of “A Mighty Fire" with Knut Reiersrud. There's also prog(-ish) rock on “Harmony Jam" with Nels Cline and there's a kind of electronic serialism on “All Aboard For Futureseville" with Jim O'Rourke. For sheer sublimity though, “The Distant Thunder" would be hard to beat, Debashish Bhattacharaya ...

Album Review

Tania Chen, Henry Kaiser, Wadada Leo Smith, William Winant: Ocean of Storms

Read "Ocean of Storms" reviewed by Troy Dostert

by Troy Dostert
February 21, 2017

In between stints as a videographer of below-ice underwater regions in Antarctica, guitarist Henry Kaiser maintains a remarkably busy agenda as an improvising musician. Here he's joined by Wadada Leo Smith, an occasional partner going back to their mutual connection with Eugene Chadbourne in the 1970s and later collaboration on their Yo Miles! album from 1998. Pianist Tania Chen and percussionist William Winant, both of whom have recently worked with Kaiser as well (on Megasonic Chapel, from 2015), round out ...

Multiple Reviews

Three from Henry Kaiser on Balance Point Acoustics

by John Eyles
May 11, 2016

The Balance Point Acoustics label was set up by double bassist Damon Smith in 2001 to document his own music. In the years since, the label has issued a steady stream of recordings, most featuring Smith. Significantly, the first of the label's releases not to include the bassist was the 2006 Henry Kaiser solo album Domo Arigato Derek-Sensei!, a tribute to Derek Bailey who was recently deceased at the time; Kaiser and Bailey had first recorded together as early as ...

Album Review

Henry Kaiser - Damon Smith - Weasel Walter: Plane Crash Two

Read "Plane Crash Two" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
May 3, 2015

This album was created shortly after experimental guitarist Henry Kaiser's large ensemble collaboration with fabled Brit guitarist Ray Russell The Celestial Squid (Cuneiform, 2015), as Plane Crash Two marks the second installment of the trio's unadulterated free improvisation exploits. Here, three longtime associates generate that special synergy required to pull it off. Regardless of tempo or pitch, the musicians expand, contract and generate call and response patterns via microsecond-like reactions amid the ensuing developments. The program is consummated ...

Album Review

Henry Kaiser & Ray Russell: The Celestial Squid

Read "The Celestial Squid" reviewed by Troy Collins

by Troy Collins
March 12, 2015

The Celestial Squid is an unprecedented summit meeting between two renowned guitarists: legendary British session ace Ray Russell and idiosyncratic Bay Area experimentalist Henry Kaiser. Although best known as a veteran studio musician, Russell's groundbreaking early records revealed a penchant for unbridled free jazz, culminating in his 1971 masterpiece Rites and Rituals (CBS). Since then, Russell has enjoyed a lucrative freelance career, working with artists ranging from Gil Evans to David Bowie, but other than a few recent fusion-oriented endeavors, ...