Exploratory British guitarist Fred Frith's career is one of constant motion. Forays around the globe and across his fretboard produce a uniquely improvisational music with no loss of aesthetic for the emoting. Collaborations with a peerless cadre including Anthony Braxton, Derek Bailey, John Zorn, Chris Cutler, Bill Laswell, Evan Parker, Han Bennink, Ikue Mori and ensembles Henry Cow, Skeleton Crew, Naked City, Material, the Golden Palominos and Massacre saw his legend flourish over a period encompassing nearly 50 years.

On Another Day in **** Paradise, Frith's trio with Jason Hoopes (basses) and Jordan Glenn (drums/ percussion) brings dark, heavy textures reminiscent of the Downtown scene in which the guitarist thrived. Streams of feedback dance through arching, valley- wide guitar lines at once dissonant and gorgeous. The album opens with "The Origin of Marvels", a brief piece featuring Glenn's orchestral chimes, bells and clay pots against Frith's ECM-esque volume pedal phrases. The album is a study in conflict: near-gentle melodies alternate with raceways of raucousness. Frith spares little when searching for the right sound, including use of vocalized cries and neologisms. Most of the pieces are short with the central work, "Yard With Lunatics", as the standout epic. Throughout, Glenn fleetingly rolls over a drumset that includes brake drums and small percussives, responding to and rephrasing even the subtlest nuances before him while Hoopes' role, thrusting, guttural and deeply effective, often recalls Jah Wobble more than Jamaaladeen Tacuma. This is a trio fans of Frith will devour soundly.

Evocative and disturbing, the Fred Frith Trio’s Another Day in **** Paradise may just be one of the weirder and most arresting albums of the year. Joining Frith are bassist Jason Hoopes – who alternates between electric and acoustic – and drummer Jordan Glenn, whose kit wonderfully sounds as if half of it is built from toys and found objects. This album is all about sound, mood, texture, ideas, and atmosphere: demented church bells over distant guitar wails; tumbling kit and static guitar crunch punctuated by acoustic bass interjections; arco bass alongside Frith’s piercing Morton Subotnik impersonations; fuzzy slabs; his spoken nonsense syllables; long echoes reverberating across anxious and restless drums; quiet squeals and clacks behind long guitar swells mirroring the shape and direction of whale song. It is a sonic and affective world with the power to raise goosebumps.

To create this surreal soundscape the trio often returns to many of the same devices and vocabulary, but they twists and reconfigure them in new ways to fashion something fresh each time. Several tracks segue together (tracks two through six form a kind of mini-suite) and the group shifts gears quite quickly, which makes for a very quick and engaging listen. When Frith et al decide to change direction there is no hedging or tip-toeing – transitions are made assertively and roles are settled into at once, allowing for immediate discovery and invention.

Frith, Hoopes, and Glenn’s take on paradise is dark, and sounds akin to a seedy underworld out of a China Miéville novel, or perhaps the soundtrack to deleted Blade Runner scenes that were too twisted to use. Regardless of the inspiration, it’s nowhere I’d like to visit in person. But I will gladly take my ears there any time.

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