Henry Kaiser

Henry Kaiser (1952), a prolific and eclectic guitarist from Oakland, California, started out in the wake of Derek Bailey with albums such as Ice Death (October 1977), a collection of seventeen Dadaist duets pairing guitar with saxophones, trombones, and cellos. Each piece is a miniature of entirely random sonic emissions in which humor prevails over rationality. It is an art of carefully calibrated dissonance, exemplified by Blue Dolphin, featuring John Oswald's chirping alto sax and Laurel Spring's hysterical vocal solfeggio, and by Wind Crystal, the album's most austere and rarefied piece, built almost entirely around guitar harmonics and mishaps, with Eugene Chadbourne on second guitar. Improvised (Music Gallery, 1978) and Moose And Salmon (February 1979 - Music Gallery, 1979) are collaborations with Oswald.

While Protocol indulges excessively in sonic effects, the live album Outside Pleasure puts Kaiser's repertoire of cacophonous tricks to work in delirious, clownish suites such as Outside Pleasure (featuring some of the most psychotic pizzicatos and crescendos ever recorded on guitar), The Stormy Present (with a chilling succession of psychedelic glissandos), and The Farmer In Heaven (echoing, however faintly, Japanese dance theater), all of them harmonic massacres haunted by missed notes and deliberate detunings.

These transitional works paved the way for Aloha, a double album that represents the culmination of this phase. The Shadow Line is Kaiser's definitive solo statement, encompassing an immense range of influences, from Hendrix-like glissandos to psychedelic distortion, from piano clusters to Cagean indeterminacy, with an electronic interlude worthy of a ghost story. The horror suite Aloha Gamera, on the other hand, was electronically processed in the studio, blending Kaiser's trademark guitar mishaps with every imaginable buzz, drone, and overdub. Yet the performance is so frenzied that, at its loudest and most chaotic moments, one seems to hear echoes of flamenco footwork and even imitations of the harpsichord.

Outside Aloha Pleasure (Dexter's Cigar, 1996) combines Outside Pleasure and Aloha.

The cassette Mah Jong Hell (Mystery Tape Laboratory, 1983) collected solo home demos with old drum machines.

With the suite It's A Wonderful Life (from the work of the same name), Kaiser's compositional technique began to display an unmistakable centrifugal pull toward the most disparate musical idioms, including bluegrass, blues, rock, Indian, and Japanese music.

With It's A Wonderful Life, Kaiser's compositional technique began to show a centrifugal drift toward a wide variety of musical idioms, both popular and classical.
What sets apart Kaiser's improvisations is that they don't seem to belong to any of the established traditions. There is little or no jazz in It's A Wonderful Life, despite the free-form format. There are, on the other hand, subtle references to the rock, bluegrass and blues traditions, and not so subtle tributes to Indian and Japanese classical music. The hypnotic scales, the fractured melodies and the intricate tonal zigzagging are framed by neurotic tempos, giving the performance a very modern, urban feeling. In fact, the overall effect is closer to an aicd-rock jam or to a melodic fantasia a` la Mike Oldfield than to Derek Bailey's guitar improvisations. The delirious (almost heavy-metal) solo of Let's Drink adds Indian drumming and funky syncopation. The Book Of Gold, instead, is a concerto for guitar noises, an austere exploration of timbres.

The albums from the first phase of Kaiser's career helped redefine the concept of chamber music in a broader sense. Even in these early works, Kaiser's avant-garde jazz is never excessively intellectual or abstract, always retaining a human element, often in the form of provocative humor. Kaiser expanded Derek Bailey's vocabulary of creative music by embracing contamination from every kind of electronic device and every form of musical gesture. As a result, he came to resemble Eugene Chadbourne more than his English mentor, eventually crossing paths with progressive rock. For example, Who Needs Enemies (October 1983), recorded in collaboration with Fred Frith, is a showcase of eccentric duets and assorted noises. His musical upbringing, after all, was that of an average Californian teenager who had grown up listening to Captain Beefheart's Magic Band and the Grateful Dead's acid jams, and whose musical philosophy reflected the spirit of the alternative radio stations of the hippie era, which freely broadcast non-commercial music while effortlessly mixing the most diverse genres.

Eclectic and chaotic, imaginative and playful, Kaiser's musical language eventually absorbed elements from virtually every culture, all enriched by his virtuosic cacophony. Invite The Spirit, inspired by Korean ceremonial music and recorded as a trio with Noyes and Korean harpist Sang Won Park, is one of his masterpieces, featuring chamber pieces in which the most improbable detunings blend naturally with the shamanic and Confucian atmospheres of sinawi.

Drawing ever closer to the world of rock, Kaiser recorded Marrying For Money (November 1985), later reissued as Re-Marrying For Money (SST, 1989), a completely improvised album performed by a hard-driving rock power trio that echoes Massacre. It displays a dazzling assortment of deliberate wrong notes (Set Up), grotesque minimalism (Big Clock, Java Jack), violent dissonance (Too Late For Tears, Tapping The Source), and magnificent Beefheart-style blues (Pigs And Battleship, Hairy Eyeball), culminating in the extended post-psychedelic delirium of Last Of The Few, a duet with Bill Frisell. With this album, Kaiser arrived at a mature way of applying his extended guitar techniques to the free improvisation of rock.

Kaiser's rock and funk souls rule on Devil In The Drain (february 1987 - SST, 1987). Sugagaki for Conlon sounds like Frank Zappa (both the verbose guitar solos and the band-like synclavier arrangements) mixed with some Weather Report and some Herbie Hancock. Dark Memory #4 is a three-part work: a dissonant keyboard study, a watercolor of atmospheric guitar tones, and a frantic Mahavishnu Orchestra-like fugue. The haunting Roadside Picnic evolves from a subdued piano sonata to a polyrhythmic industrial nightmare. The mood runs the gamut from the comic intermezzo King of the Wild Frontier to the Irish square-dance cum Japanese court ballet of If This Goes On, via the dreamy gamelan concerto of Free to Choose. The only reference to his past life as a free improviser is the intricate, quasi-raga out-of-tune guitar solo Lost Horizon, one of his best ever.

These works were followed by Those Who Know History Are Doomed To Repeat It, on which Kaiser reinterprets the Grateful Dead's Dark Star and several Captain Beefheart compositions in his own idiosyncratic style, and by Crazy-Backwards Alphabet (December 1986), recorded with a rock quartet that included John French. The album alternates white blues in the vein of John Mayall (Get To You), abstract and cacophonous instrumentals (Dropped D's, We Are In Control?), and once again revives the lopsided exuberance of the Magic Band (Lobster On The Rock).

This marked the beginning of Kaiser's era of collaborations, both in rock—most notably Live, Love, Larf & Loaf (March 1987), with Richard Thompson, John French, and Fred Frith—and in jazz, with Popular Science (May 1989), a collection of surreal sketches performed as duets with Russian keyboardist Sergey Kuryokhin. The latter is a festival of eccentricity conceived in a thoroughly postmodern spirit: Out Taco Sauce, Sales Pitch, Electricity Vs Foods, and Barking Dogs Vs Minimalists rank among the funniest and most successful comic inventions of Kaiser's career. Unfortunately, the quartet failed to recapture that spirit on the mediocre Invisible Means (March 1990 - Windham Hill, 1990).

Kaiser is a spontaneous and playful musician, eager to embrace any kind of musical experiment, though not particularly gifted as a composer. His greatest strength lies in solo performance. His finest achievements remain the solemn fantasies built around deliberately "wrong" notes in Aloha Gamera, It's A Wonderful Life, and Last Of The Few.

Heart's Desire (october 1989 - Reckless, 1990) documents a live performance by a rock band fronted by Kaiser that included industrial guitarist Bruce Anderson and Grateful Dead's keyboardist Tom Constanten, with songs ranging from garage rave-ups to languid blues-rock, an eclectic choice of covers (from Stockhausen to Neil Young via the Grateful Dead's Dark Star). A similar idea yielded Siamese Stepbrothers (Cuneiform, 1995). Hope You Like Our New Direction (Reckless, 1991) is, instead, another display of his eclectic background.

Thankfully, Kaiser returned to his free-form noise guitar roots with Tomorrow Knows Where You Live (march 1991 - Victo, 1991), duets with 22-year old Jim O'Rourke and solos of each of the two (best is O'Rourke's droning Just as A Wall Of Quiet Flowing Stands Near), Acoustics (august 1993 - Victo, 1993), a quartet with O'Rourke, Oswald and violinist Mari Kimura, and the 25-minute solo-guitar title-track of The Five Heavenly Truths (FOT, 1992).

Lemon Fish Tweezer (Cuneiform, 1992) is a career retrospective (with, alas, rarities).

Kaiser and David Lindley recorded five albums of music from Madagascar (with the help of Malagasy musicians): A World Out Of Time Volume (Shanachie, 1992), A World Out Of Time Volume 2 (Shanachie, 1993), A World Out Of Time Volume 3 (Shanachie, 1994), The Sweet Sunny North (Shanachie, 1994), The Sweet Sunny North Volume 2 (Shanachie, 1996).

Eternity Blue (Shanachie, 1995) is a Grateful Dead tribute.

Passwords (november 1997) was a trio with pianist Paul Plimley and cellist Danielle DeGruttola.

Wireforks (Shanachie, 1995) is duets with Derek Bailey.

The Mistakes is a rock band started by Mike Keneally.

Yo Miles (january 1998 - Shanachie, 1998) with trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith (and a rhythm section) is a collection of jams on Davis' themes.

Guitar Party (Gaff, 2003) was a collaboration with fellow virtuoso guitarist Glenn Phillips (Hampton Grease Band).

Psychedelic Guitar Circus (Sky Ranch , 2003) is another collection of (psychedelic-era) covers.

Through (january 1999) collected duets with Italian guitarist Roberto Zorzi.

Sky Garden (Cuneiform, 2004) is another collaboration with trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith, this time a double-disc recording split between more Miles Davis covers and Smith's compositions. Zakir Hussain, Greg Osby and John Tchicaiare among the guests.

Infinity Squared (july 2006) documented a live duet with percussionist Andrea Centazzo (also on sampling).

Indestructible Fantasy (june 2006), released only ten years later, featured Alexei Pliousnine (electric guitar), Marco Eneidi (alto sax), Rova Saxophone Quartet's Jon Raskin (alto, baritone and sopranino saxes), Scott Looney (piano), Damon Smith (double bass), Gino Robair (drums) and John Hanes (percussion).

Where Endless Meets Disappearing (may 2009) was a solo work of 18 brief pieces.

The trio Henry Kaiser, Charles Noyes and Weasel Walter recorded the live Ninja Star Danger Rock (2011). Plan Crash (2011) documents a trio with bassist Damon Smith and drummer Weasel Walter.

Kaiser sculpted the 70 minute A Little Stroke Of Light (2010) using an harmonizer and an antiquated Lexicon PCM-41 digital delay to process his live guitar improvisation.

Everything Forever - 80 Minute Live Trance Guitar Solo (2011) is a solo electric guitar sonata with no overdubbing. Solo Acoustic On Beardsell Guitars (february 2011) was totally improvised.

Invisible Rays (march 2011) was the trio of drummer Morgan Agren and guitarists Henry Kaiser and Trey Gunn.

Teuffel Tesla Duets (may 2012) was a collaboration with Killick Hinds.

The guitar trio of Nels Cline, Henry Kaiser and Mermen's Jim Thomas, along with drummer Weasel Walter and Mermen's bassist Allen Whitman, recorded Jazz Free (september 2008).

Ultraviolet Licorice (BLove, 2009) collects improvisations with keyboardist Bob Bralove.

The Starbreak Splatterlight (september 2009) featured Canadian pianist Paul Plimley and drummers Lukas Ligeti and Weasel Walter.

Kamura (november 2012) documents an improvised collaboration between Henry Kaiser (acoustic & electric guitars, piano), Torsten Mller (five string acoustic bass) and percussionist Randy Raine-Reusch (who plays a lot of exotic instruments: khaen, ajeang, biwa, zheng, changgo, suling gambu, prepared zheng, bowed zheng, sho).

Lake Monsters (november 2013) documents guitar duets between Henry Kaiser and Sandy Ewen, notably the 22-minute Irizima.

Relations (november 2013) documents duets with bassist Damon Smith.

Requia And Other Improvisations For Guitar Solo (may and august 2013) collects solo guitar improvisations, notably the 22-minute Requiem For Fred Lieberman.

The 4-disc box-set Garden Of Memory (june 2014) delivers almost six hours of live guitar solos. A bonus disc contains A Little Stroke Of Light and No Trouble With The Tromba.

Henry Kaiser, bassist Damon Smith and drummer Weasel Walter returned for Plane Crash Two (april 2014), notably the 21-minute False Alarms.

The Deconstruction Of What You Know (2014) features Joshua Allen on tenor sax, Randy Hunt on acoustic bass and William Winant on drums.

The double-disc Collection Of Curiosities For Airplay: 1977-2002 (Playola, 2014) collects material from 25 years of his career.

The double-disc set You Can't Get There From Here (june 2010 - Fractal, 2015), whose highlight is the 24-minute You Can't Get There From Here, features Michael Manring on bass, Danielle DeGruttola on cello, Chinese musician Wu Na on guqin, Indian musician Aanatha Krishnan on mridangam and Indian vocalist Gautam Tejas Ganeshan.

Nearly Extinct (april 2015) documents an improvised collaboration with Steve Parker (trombone), Damon Smith (double bass) and Chris Cogburn (drums), notably the lengthy jams East Cape Yupik and Hixxkaryana.

Henry Kaiser and Alan Licht recorded Skip To The Solo (august 2015) with a rhythm section.

Henry Kaiser, Tania Chen (piano), Danielle DeGruttola (cello), Soo-Yeon Lyuh (haegum) and William Winant (percussion) recorded the 80-minute piece of Megasonic Chapel (january 2015).

Lake Monsters (Balance Point Acoustics, 2015) collects duets with fellow guitarist Sandy Ewen.

The Celestial Squid (april 2014) was a collective improvisation with fellow guitarist Ray Russell (a British free-jazz veteran who composed the early James Bond scores beginning with Dr No in 1962) and guesting drummers Weasel Walter and William Winant, bassists Michael Manring (electric) and Damon Smith (acoustic), and saxophonists Steve Adams, Joshua Allen, Phillip Greenlief and Aram Shelton. Seven lengthy jams span the range from rocking dissonance (guKTen LIMPo) to agonizing post-blues (The Enumeration), and from thundering boogie (Disinterested Bystander) to abstract noisescape (Construction #14) via the chaos of The Celestial Squid that is both clownish and romantic. This is the perfect setting for Kaiser the jazz improviser, who too often has preferred to take the low road of solo improvisation instead of the high road of group improvisation. In reality, he excels when he is surrounded by equally creative and unorthodox souls. If nothing else, having to deal with other players bends his egocentric brainy guitar science to truly engaging and spontaneous artistic expression. Less indulgent than Megasonic Chapel and better played than Nearly Extinct or You Can't Get There From Here, this is probably the best Kaiser album of this new prolific stage.

Kaiser played fretless bass on Talk To Me About Invisible People (2016) with Kobe Dupree (synth and turntables), Jack Thompson (fretted bass and turntables) and Alexei Pliousnine (lap steel guitar).

Nazca Lines - Solo Acoustic Guitar (HK, 2016) collects 22 solo improvisations on 18 different acoustic guitars.

A Rainbow For Riley (Fractal, 2016) is a tribute to Terry Riley, performed with Russian guitarist Alexei Pliousnine.

Tania Chen on piano, Henry Kaiser on guitars, Wadada Leo Smith on trumpet and William Winant on percussion recorded Ocean Of Storms (2016).

The double-disc Positively Space Music (Fractal, 2017) contains 150 minutes of solos, duos and trios with Chris Muir (electric guitar and modular synthesizer) and Bob Bralove (keyboards).

Friends & Heroes: Guitar Duets (Fractal, 2017) collects 15 unreleased duets recorded between 1977 and 2017: Split the Difference (2007), with John Russell; The Very Last of the Very Few (1985), with Bill Frisell; All Aboard for Futuresville (1991), with Jim OÎéÎũRourke; Three Languages (1979), with Fred Frith; The Distant Thunder (2017), with Debashish Bhattacharaya, etc.

The guitar duo of Henry Kaiser and Ian Brighton (member of the Kontakte Trio with Trevor Taylor and Steve Beresford) recorded Together Apart (august 2017).

Kaiser, Andrea Centazzo and Tania Chen (piano) recorded the three 25-minute pieces of Ghidorah (Fractal, 2017).

The Deep Unreal (december 2017) is a solo guitar improvisation.

We Call All Times Soon (Split Rock, 2018) contains duets with fellow guitarist Ed Pettersen.

The double-disc Interstellar Transmissions (Split Rock, 2018) collects improvisations to NASA recordings from the Voyager spacecraft by Henry Kaiser (18 string harp guitar), and many others.

In The Realm Of (march 2018) was a collaboration with Joshua Marshall & Joshua Allen on tenor saxes and Spirit on drums.

Astral Plane Crash (april 2018) documents two lengthy improvisations by Vinny Golia (flute, sopranino, soprano, baritone saxes, saxello, Bb clarinet, piccolo), Henry Kaiser (guitar), Bob Moses and Weasel Walter (both on drums, percussion) and Damon Smith (amplified double bass): the 44-minute Fountain of Dreams and the 35:30-minute Mysterious Journey.

Mudang Rock (july 2017), mostly inspired by Korean music, features Kaiser in guitar, Rudresh Mahanthappa on alto sax, Bill Laswell on electric bass, Simon Barker on drums (who also worked in Scott Tinkler trio), Soo-Yeon Lyuh on haegum (a Korean fiddle), Tania Chen on piano and Danielle DeGruttola on cello. It includes the 19-minute Yongari vs. Bulgasari.

Wild Courses (april 2017), a collaboration with Captain Beefheart's associate Max Kutner, contains the 20-minute More Court Music

Five Times Surprise (september 2018) features Anthony Pirog (six-string guitars), the Turtle String Quartet's Tracy Silverman (six-string electric violin), Andy West (six-string bass) and Jeff Sipe (drums).

El Tren Fantasma/ The Ghost Train (february 2019) was a collaboration with fellow guitarist Alvaro Domene, inspired by a western silent film produced in Mexico in 1927.

More Requia - In Memory Of Great Ancestors (Metalanguage, 2019), that also featured Wadada Leo Smith, Andrea Centazzo and Gino Robair, was dedicated to fellow guitarists such as Sonny Sharrock, Larry Coryell, and Derek Bailey, and contains the 17-minute More Echoes and the 13-minute What’s Become Of The Baby.

The double-disc Above & Beyond Protocol (Metalanguage, 2019) features Andrea Centazzo on percussion, malletkat & sampler and Henry Kaiser on electric & acoustic guitars, and collects 150 minutes of unreleased recordings from 1978 to 2019.

The electric guitar duo of Kaiser and Norvegian composer Ivar Grydeland is documented on In The Arctic Dreamtime (january 2019) .

The Dukes Of Bedford (march 2020) documents several improvisations by guitarists John Russell, Henry Kaiser and Ray Russell and Ollie Brice on double bass.

Problems Are Only Opportunities In Work Clothes (february 2020) contains the 50-minute solo When your work speaks for itself, don't interrupt.

At One Time - Improvisations For Cecil Taylor (Metalanguage, 2021) features Henry Kaiser with John Oswald on alto sax and Paul Plimley on vibes, plus guests Scott Amendola on drums and Tracy Silverman on 6-string violin, and contains the 26-minute Oceans Felons Salad and the 18-minute Fir Loom.

Figure/Ground (february 2021) documents a collaboration between Henry Kaiser and Anthony Pirog.

Lions & Fireflies (september 2021) documents a collaboration with poet Michael Rothenberg.

Mahalo Nui (Fractal, 2023) contains solo pieces for electric and acoustic guitar, including the 23-minute Antarctic Requiem For Liz Sutter & Bija Sass.

The trio of Scott Amendola (drums, live electronics), Henry Kaiser (guitar) and Michael Manring (bass) recorded the double-disc set Haunted By Eternity (Fratctal, 2023), notably the 19-minute Haunted by Eternity.

It was followed by The Lost Chord - Live Baritone Guitar Solos (MetaLanguage, 2024).

Night Lamp (recorded between march and september 2024) documents a collaboration with Tungu (aka Sergiy Senchuk) on vocals, field recordings & samples and Mia Zabelka on electric violin & electronics.

The double-disc set The Wolf At The Door (Sub Rosa, 2025) documents a collaboration with Czech composer P.ST: a solo baritone guitar disc that pays tribute to science-fiction author Gene Wolfe, and a solo electronic disc by P.ST, derived from Kaiser's guitar recordings (the 50-minute Sea Of Memories of solo electronics and the 22-minute Pattern Of Joy).