Ironic Universe

Fred Frith has been famous among avant-gardists for decades for his innovative and challenging (yet almost always strangely accessible, and sometimes downright lyrical) guitar experimentation. On this album he takes second billing to lesser-known fellow guitar experimentalist Janet Feder: half of the tracks on this CD are live recordings of Feder by herself, and the other half feature her in duo improvisations with Frith. (The package also includes a DVD with live solo performances by each of them.) Feder's solo tracks are very impressive — like Frith, she refuses to be bound by traditional playing methods and regularly subjects her guitar to all manner of scrapes, taps, wiggles, and thuds. But her goal is music, not noise, and the sounds that she produces are sometimes startling but always strangely beautiful. The duo tracks are even better, however, due to the pair's surprising level of musical empathy. Note, for example, the delicate wails and chord washes that Frith layers behind Feder's fingerpicking on "Heart Beat Faster," or the way percussive scrapes and railroad-hammer pings punctuate the seductively lovely Travis-style picking on "Short Story." Those who come to this disc as fans of Frith will likely come away for it looking for previous recordings by Feder. Beautiful.