**** Fred Frith with Ensemble Modern

TRAFFIC CONTINUES

(Winter & Winter)

*** Fred Frith and Chris Cutler

2 GENTLEMEN IN VERONA

(Cuneiform)

After a quarter-century in the trenches of the avant-garde, guitarist Fred Frith continues to make adventurous music in as many ways possible. But these days his most visible roles are as playful improviser and serious composer. 2 Gentlemen finds him allied once again with his Henry Cow bandmate and supremely musical drummer Chris Cutler. They romp through this 1999 performance, creating mean or sweet textures that shift and erupt, banging and twanging out their own willful sonic wonderland with ears cocked for small melodies, textural grace, and humor.

It's humor that seems the most consistent element of Frith's work. So his eight-part composition "Traffic Continues," played by the 21-piece Ensemble Modern, not only comes to grips with the sonic rush of our lives but delivers little aural pratfalls in its woodwind dénouements. "Traffic Continues II: Gusto" is more serious: a memorial for the late cellist Tom Cora based on lines culled from Cora's playing. It's full of melody and sonic intersections -- places where beautiful violin lines are nipped and sliced by burps of horn, tinkling samples, and the electric harp of Zena Parkins or Ikue Mori's uniquely colorful -- rather than driving -- drum programming. The piece's range of moods and sounds is both dazzling and sonorous, falling somewhere in the widening cracks between rock and new music.

-- Ted Drozdowski