E-Mail This Article to a Friend Speaking in tongues Free improv’s electro-squads BY FRANKLIN BRUNO

American free-jazz players like Ornette Coleman or Albert Ayler strove to say something new with a still-recognizable vocabulary — though it might not have seemed so at the time. But many of their European counterparts attempted to invent a new language every time they spoke — Derek Bailey, Evan Parker, the members of AMM, to name a few English pioneers of so-called non-idiomatic improvisation. Their stated aim has always been to start over with each count-off, assuming as little as possible about their own musical vocabulary, or how it will interact with that of other players.

It doesn’t always work, of course: many an extemporized performance traces a quiet-chaotic-quiet arc as ossified in its own way as that of any bop quintet. But some non-idiomatic stalwarts have kept themselves speaking in tongues by meeting unexpected interlocutors on their own ground. Bailey himself is a prime example. Not that the 71-year-old guitarist hasn’t repeated a few phrases — his bone-dry, unlyrical anti-style can’t be mistaken for anyone else’s. But on discs like 1998’s Plays Back (Bingo), chattering and clanging over pre-made backing tracks from associates old (Henry Kaiser) and new (Tied & Tickled Trio, Ui’s Sasha-Frere Jones), he can still make everything around him sound subtly different.

David Sylvian’s Blemish (Samhedi Sound) uses Bailey in a way no one else has thought of — as a vocal accompanist. Since disbanding the Bowie-esque Japan in 1982, Sylvian’s been a hothouse flower, shrinking from live work and issuing hermetic, studio-bound recordings at wide intervals. (Before 1999’s Dead Bees on a Cake, he took 12 years off.) Much of Blemish is gorgeous but antiseptic, with deep, Scott Walker-esque vocals flowing evenly over cautious guitar tremolos and synth oscillations that have the rhythmic impact of a swaying branch.

The almost pop-shaped "Let’s Go Shopping," with a field recording of wire carts colliding in place of a solo, is something of an exception. But three cuts based around Bailey’s contributions really shake the tree. Recorded in a separate studio with no guidance from Sylvian, the guitarist’s asymmetrical phrasing and sudden, ringing pauses force the singer to play by another set of rules. "She Is Not" is a warm-up: 45 seconds of push and pull completed by a few gnomic phrases ("There she is . . . there she is not"). "The Good Son" and "How Little We Need To Be Happy" are more sustained, with percussive flurries piercing dramatically delivered lyrics ("Cry all your tears/The sorrow that threatens to overwhelm you") like St. Sebastian’s arrows. Sylvian’s rarely sounded so engaged, or Bailey so approachable.

Spring Heel Jack — the drum ’n’ bass duo best known for their club mix of Everything But the Girl’s "Walking Wounded" — have been collaborating with "out" players of various stripes since 2001’s Masses. Live (Thirsty Ear), Ashley Wales and John Coxon’s third such effort, features two frequent Bailey associates: saxophonist Evan Parker and Dutch drummer Han Bennink. The disc’s international cast also includes pianist Matthew Shipp and bassist William Parker (no relation), both from New York’s free-jazz inner circle. The least usual suspect? Guitarist Jason Pierce, a/k/a Spiritualized frontman J Spaceman, who kicks off the first of two 20-plus-minute tracks with a cannonade of Daydream Nation–era Sonic Youth guitar.

Pierce is a wild card but not a spoiler. His interaction with Shipp’s electric piano can’t help recalling the texture — though not the funkiness — of Miles Davis’s Bitches Brew. One of the disc’s surprises, in fact, is how much of the conversation is conducted in one or another jazz dialect. Bennink — surely the only musician to have played with both Eric Dolphy and The Ex — is all over the map but manages to shoehorn in a few minutes of his patented hard-swinging brush-and-snare work. Evan Parker’s tenor, meanwhile, is often nearly unrecognizable, trading his usual lexicon of squawk and pops for a chesty Archie Shepp/Sonny Rollins tone.

Maybe these older players are making room for Spring Heel Jack’s new contribution to the tradition. Electronic improvisation has in the past few years become an ever stronger element in the non-idiomatic project. With any timbre the software can conjure up at their fingertips, the electronic improvisers’ sonic choices aren’t constrained in the way a single "real" instrument, however brilliantly handled, must be. There’s a passage near Live’s midpoint where Wales and Coxon cast a net of crackling, crumpled micro-rhythms over the rest of the band, bringing the performance together in a way that feels utterly new. They may not be doing anything but triggering samplers and digital treatments with a few keystrokes — but it sounds like they’re tearing up the dictionary.