Henry Kaiser

One of the top guitar experimentalists of recent decades, Henry Kaiser has done everything from world music expeditions in Norway and Madagascar to abstract improv with fellow six-stringers Fred Frith and Eugene Chadbourne. He was an important member of the late 1970s school of American improvisers, along with Chadbourne, John Zorn, ROVA Saxophone Quartet and others, and during this time debuted a number of instrument-defying, noise-generating techniques that still have people scratching their heads -- for evidence see Outside Aloha Pleasure or Friends & Enemies. Since the mid-1980s, he has worked frequently in more traditional band contexts, often exploring his late '60s/early '70s roots in psychedelia (the surprising Grateful Dead covers of Eternity Blue) and Fusion (Yo Miles!, a tribute to electric-era Miles Davis with trumpeter Leo Smith). As his output varies widely, not everything will please every listener; but those who aren't deterred by a little unpredictability (and a few cornball album covers) will find plenty to explore in Kaiser's music.