Guitarist Fred Frith is not anybody’s father’s guitar hero, but a player and thinker with his own particular range of interests and ideas. He’s not a jazz player, per se, but improvisation is central to his being, with a style that resonates within the classical-improv camp, and entails delicate abstraction, Asiana and rock-tinged noise making. Few guitarists abuse their instruments so beautifully. A few angles of Frith’s intriguing persona can be glimpsed at via this release, which is mostly realized without scores or preconceptions.
The sonic landscape differs on Later, on the Victoriaville fest’s Victo label. Duties are happily dispersed and confused: Mark Dresser’s explorations on acoustic bass include his innate timbral reach; Ikue Mori’s electronic percussion is guided, as usual, by an organic logic; and, working the fringes between the physical and the electronic, Frith offers up his own poetic sound fragments. It’s a happy three-way encounter in the middle of a creative act.
Mark Dresser/Fred Frith/Ikue Mori: Later
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