Seven electric guitar duos from Kaiser & Ewen, recorded during a 6 hour marathon session in Houston, TX, impressive for the intense technical interactions as well as the assertive use of sound and distortion to augment their wonderfully strange, monstrous ideas.
"This alien, completely original music was recorded in a 6 hour marathon session in Houston, Tx that produced two other Kaiser titles. This one consists of very electric duets with Ewen playing electric and Kaiser playing both electric and and acoustic. Duets with aggressive sonic density.
As a double bassist I have long argued that playing music is a profoundly physical act. In this music I hear not only the physical body but the physical world. It is a crucial distinction that the Canadian born - Houston based Ewen plays her guitar flat on her lap rather than flat on the table - her legs are involved, moves and knocks the instrument around with both refined small gestures and full scale violence. Perhaps it creates a more dynamic and human sound than the table guitar forefathers like Keith Rowe and Fred Frith. Each of her objects are completely explored. Kaiser on the other hand allows for chance within his pedalboard, but so much of his tone comes from the precise martial arts power in his hands (see track 4, Storrsjoodjueret). While he plays in the normal standing or seated manner, the sounds produced are anything but normal. The interaction of their highly personal sounds creates new patterns and crossings that do not exist within their own individual worlds.
Ewen is an architect, Kaiser is a research diver in Antarctica. Kaiser once told me he wonders why more improvisers aren't interested in science fiction, since a good sci-fi author often sets up a new world with parameters in a kind of literary and thought experiment. Usually asking: WHAT IF? Kaiser seems to set up a new musical experiment every time he plays, rather than going for practiced music he sets up musical speculation to find the novel, alien, and strange. These facts may or may not have anything to do with the sound produced, though I have rarely heard a unique soundworld so fully realized on it's own unique terms."-Damon Smith, Balance Point Acoustic
"Henry Kaiser is an American guitarist and composer, known as an idiosyncratic soloist, a sideman, an ethnomusicologist, and a film score composer. Recording and performing prolifically in many styles of music, Kaiser is a fixture on the San Francisco Bay Area music scene. He is considered a member of the "first generation" of American free improvisers."-Wikipedia
"Born in Toronto, Canada in 1985, Sandy Ewen received a Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Texas at Austin in 2008. Since then she has resided in Houston, TX where she pursues musical and visual projects and her architecture license. Ewen has released several albums, including a duo with guitarist Tom Carter, a trio with bassist Damon Smith & drummer Weasel Walter, and a rock album with Austin's Weird Weeds. Ewen's visual work is closely tied to her work in sound; she uses both mediums to explore texture, composition and materials.
Ewen's microcollages, enlarged through projection and digital printing, are an exploration of material and technique. Using a unique process pioneered by the artist, natural materials and polymers are torn, liquefied, scorched, melted, cut, and fused. When enlarged, the microscopic nuances of these manipulations are manifested in exquisite detail. Ewen has presented prints of her work at 14 Pews (2012), Spacetaker/Fresh Arts (2012), Khon's (2013) & Galeria Regina (2014).
As an improviser in both art and music, Ewen sees herself as guiding materials and space rather than executing a preconceived composition. "I like to explore mediums and materials and tease out their essence," says Ewen. "Working with slide projections has focused my eye on the subtitles of natural processes of decay and transformation. Through my work, I am asking questions of the materials rather than dictating answers." "-Sandy Ewen website