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

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 by four 10-minute plus workouts. On the humorously titled opener "Cactus Makes Perfect," drummer Weasel Walter's stimulating, hyper-mode cymbals, drums and small percussion instrument fabrications tender a bulbous platform, contrasted by bassist Damon Smith's rugged arco-lines and limber bottom-end. Moreover, they gel to a cavalcade of jagged phrasings and flex some muscle, offset by a few quiet interludes. But when performing on electric guitar, Kaiser's off-centered choruses complete with phased, reverse-engineering effects and eerie tonalities present a bizarre outlook as the band also ventures toward subterranean depths and volcanic zeniths. They delve into asymmetrically oriented avant-metal wonderlands and on "False Alarms," Kaiser's volume control techniques and Walter's peppery snare drum rolls offer a fractured stream of consciousness with edgy dialogues.

The trio pulls out the proverbial stops with all out blitzes and frenzied soloing galas akin to a lethal aerial assault; although, "Fifi Blows Her Top" features the guitarist's nimble plucking and Smith's mournful bowed-lines and other contrapuntal schemas. In sum, the group's simmering narratives, animated exchanges and free-spirited risk-taking mechanisms spawn an indubitably intense joyride.