One should not be fooled by the album title; this disc is anything but a "pain pen." What it is is a startling improvisation between two guitarists whose styles seemingly could not be more incompatible, one of new music's finest drummers and perhaps the most inventive double bassist in America. Given that three of these participants have worked together before,
Eugene Chadbourne would seem to be the outsider here (big surprise). But there are no outsiders in this set of evenly divided short and long improvisations where dynamics, texture, tension, and tonality are as important as "what" is played. It is relatively easy to distinguish between the two guitarists;
Chadbourne's single-string lines are densely packed with notes, shimmering along the fretboard in arpeggios that reflect a scalar intelligence unequaled in modern improvisatory music.
Joe Morris, on the other hand, has a leaner, more angular approach, though he also employs lovely shapes and tones in his playing that become intense only in reaction to the other players and come straight from the jazz tradition no matter what he's playing.
Chadbourne also plays banjo here with the same hybrid craziness of styles he approaches the guitar with: country, bluegrass, blues, jazz, and the American primitivism of
John Fahey.
Mark Dresser and
Susie Ibarra play intuitively with one another, acting as alternating guideposts not to anchor the guitarists, but to set them free.
Ibarra's ability to match beat for note
Morris in "Painlepesiveros" is nothing short of startling.
Dresser uses his instrument like a paintbrush, creating accents with his pizzicato and bottom-line scenarios with his bow. Each track different from the last, all of them seem to point toward something that happens on the longer cuts, a complete gel of four distinct musical personalities whose tonal and atonal investigations are rooted in the pursuit of sound itself as music, not vice versa.