Friends & Enemies (1999)

About this title: 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 ...

Tracks:

1. It Moves... [Kaiser/Frith]
2. The Changing of Names [Kaiser/Frith]
3. It Sings [Kaiser/Frith]
4. Believing What We Read [Kaiser/Frith]
5. But Does It Swing? [Kaiser/Frith]
6. Hard Time Killing Floor Blues [James]
7. The Golden Eighties [Kaiser/Frith]
8. Everyday Objects [Kaiser/Frith]
9. The Kirghiz Light [Kaiser/Frith]
10. Special Rider Blues [James]
11. Drowsy Maggie [Kaiser/Frith]
12. An HK Guitar Solo [Kaiser]
13. Strandloper [Kaiser/Frith]
14. Major Nichols [Kaiser/Frith]
15. The Live Trace [Kaiser/Frith]
16. See Over [Kaiser/Frith]
17. Fourth Rail [Kaiser/Frith]
18. Squirrely [Kaiser/Frith]
19. Twisted Memories Give Way to the Angry Present [Kaiser/Frith]
20. Black Glass [Kaiser/Frith]
21. Third Rail [Kaiser/Frith]
22. Three Languages [Kaiser/Frith]
23. One of Nature's Mistakes [Kaiser/Frith]
24. Roy Rogers [Kaiser/Frith]
25. The Confession [Kaiser/Frith]
26. Objects Everyday [Kaiser/Frith]
27. Wool and Water [Kaiser/Frith]
28. The Trace [Kaiser/Frith]
29. Life in Hell [Kaiser/Frith]
30. The Incarceration [Kaiser/Frith]
31. An FF Bass Solo [Frith]
32. John S. French [Kaiser/Frith]
33. Fifteen Blues [Kaiser/Frith]
34. Dog Puppet Born Out of a Sock [Kaiser/Frith]
35. Reading Glasses [Kaiser/Frith]
36. A Portrait of the Artists As Two Old Men [Kaiser/Frith]

Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is further described below.