Pathbreaking

About 30 years ago European musicians inspired by the American jazz avant-garde began creating an improvised music of their own. Its founders rejected old forms in favor of new. Sound was favored over melody, fluctuating rhythm or "pulse" over steady beat, atonality over tonality, pure spontaneity over composition. Couched in the rhetoric of liberation and revolution, the music was often confrontational. It was exhilarating -- joyous and angry all at once -- often beautiful in its abstraction, darkly comic, always demanding of the listener, and not at all like jazz.

The music of the European free-improvisers has now crossed back over the Atlantic to influence younger American musicians. Many now see free improv as an important artistic option, and with the rise of independent, artist-run labels, these younger Americans are starting to release CDs featuring some of the movement's now venerated founders. Hey, if Roy Hargrove gets Joe Henderson to play on his album, why shouldn't Gregg Bendian get Derek Bailey to play on his?

On Banter (OO Discs), percussionist Bendian and guitarist Bailey shape nine knotty improvisations in the classic European manner. Bailey builds his music out of sharp contrasts in texture, line, and volume, as he has since he pioneered free improv in England in the '60s. He's always rejecting any hint of repetition or regularity, and his precise asymmetries are in constant flux in response to his musical partner. Bendian is adept in the conversational process of free improvisation; he's equally concerned with tone color, variety, and new sounds.

This is their first recording, though they have played together many times. And they push directly into the heart of the music. Each piece capitalizes on contrasts in sound between guitar and percussion. Each trades in the rapid exchange of ideas. Each is vivid, complete, and full of lively give and take. "Select the Beam," with Bendian on bowed cymbal, moves beyond its opening spacy harmonics into rapid-fire exchanges of rusty-hinge squeaks that build in tension. "Scansion" poses the dry rumble of dumbek and the hollow plonk of bongos against Bailey's alternating linear motifs and sonic textures.

Bailey has influenced any number of guitarists, including San Franciscan Myles Boisen. Although he dedicates a track to Bailey on Guitarspeak (Rastascan), his first album as a leader, Boisen departs from the free-improv tradition in significant and exciting ways. This album relies more on the creative potential of the recording studio than Banter, which is simply a "live" documentation of a musical event. The 28 cuts of Guitarspeak, all less than four minutes long, were recorded at sessions over an eight-year period, then sequenced with the dream logic of a Max Ernst collage novel.

Boisen has a hot, complex sound -- dirty around the edges and with a molten core -- that's capable of great variety. "Guitar Bisons" is an imposingly tortured work of loud wails and big intervalic leaps of melody. "Trashman" features delicate hammered dulcimer-like sounds, quiet twittering, and a wash of white noise. Guitarist Fred Frith is the veteran improviser on the CD, and "Tar" features a noisy dialogue with Boisen that culminates in a folksong-like scrap of melody. The cast of characters is 17 strong, including assorted ad hoc groups featuring members of the Splatter Trio, saxophonist Ralph Carney, and trumpeter Tom Djll (there are also Boisen guitar solos). It's a powerful, provocative document that reveals as much about Boisen's imposing talent as it does about the wide-open new-music scene in the Bay area.

Chicago's new-music scene is similarly diverse and has the AACM (Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians) heritage to build on besides. Chicago drummer Hamid Drake carries on that tradition with Dried Rat Dog (Okkadisk), his duet with German improv pioneer Peter Brötzmann. One of 1995's best releases, the CD is a mysterious amalgam of Brötzmann's cathartic primitivism and Drake's equally powerful yet more refined rhythms. It's as if Brötzmann's rage were tempered by the healing force of Drake's African-inspired jazz drumming.

The title track opens in familiar Brötzmann terrain, with the saxophonist complaining in teakettle shrieks and short straining phrases. Drake counters with parallel fluid curves and staccato tattoos. But by the third track, "Open into the Unknown," Drake's hand drums and percussion begin to elicit uncharacteristically subtle responses from Brötzmann; he insinuates his way into the music rather than barging in.

There's a reassuring sense about these releases in which a veteran meets a new player. We see the torch being passed, and a new generation of improvisers finding its own voice.