In 1979, guitarists
Fred Frith and
Henry Kaiser made an album titled
With Friends Like These... on the
Metalanguage label. It was one of the defining documents of the downtown avant-garde scene, a collection of improvised duets on which both players essentially redefined the sound of the guitar,
Frith with his physically altered (and sometimes beaten) instruments, and
Kaiser with his virtuosic and harmonically adventurous technique. Four years later they reunited to make
Who Needs Enemies?, again on
Metalanguage, and on this second album they expanded their arsenal to include the Linn drum and sequencer.
Metalanguage went belly up not too long after, and until now the only in-print remnant from those two albums was a condensed single-disc package on
SST. The
Cuneiform reissue improves on the
SST item enormously, first of all by including the entirety of both albums, secondly by adding another full album's worth of previously unreleased live material, and thirdly by adding on top of that another half hour of new studio performances. In short, this set offers everything
Frith and
Kaiser have recorded together, and at mid-price. Absolutely a must for noise fans, skronk hounds, and adventurous guitarheads. ~ Rick Anderson
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