I first found out about Killick when looking at the players on an SS Puft with Dave Rempis disk.  He didn't have much of an opportunity to shine on that record, but I thought I'd check his work out as he is a big proponent of free jazz.  And that's what this disk is.

If you like improvised music and are adventurous, you should check this one out.

Like his take on Reign in Blood, the sound quality on this one is excellent.  All of the dynamics have been preserved and the sound of instrument is high fidelity.  We should only be so luck that all records get mastered and recorded and mixed as good as this one.
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The instrument of choice for the iconoclastic Athens, GA musician Killick is the H’arpeggione, of which there is only one in existence.  Made by instrument maker Fred Carlson, it’s a beautifully strange beast—sort of like the offspring of a guitar and a cello with a little sitar ancestry, too.  It has six conventionally played (and I mean conventionally in the loosest sense, which I’ll expand upon later) strings and an additional 12 strings that vibrate sympathetically, providing eerie sitar-esque drones.  When Killick performs in improvising groups, it’s easy for the delicate dynamics of his “devil cello” to be drowned out, but his new album The Amplifucker is comprised solely of H’arpeggione solo pieces, allowing the listener to really hear, with great clarity, what kind of sounds the instrument is capable of making.
At times, Killick gently persuades sounds out of the H’arpeggione; at other times, he zealously wrenches them out.  In addition to bowing, plucking, and strumming the strings, he scrapes them and rubs various materials (like paper, bamboo, and cloth) over them; the result is a disordered combination of notes and noises—rustles, buzzes, harmonics, squeaks, wisps, and so on.  Listeners who require steady rhythms and hummable melodies in their music will find this album to be an unlistenable art object.  But, with a view of musical pleasure without normal limits, Killick’s latest album proves to be more than simply a demonstration record; its greatest joys are conveyed through the intense enthusiasm of sound exploration—both furiously burrowing and casually wandering to find the sonic limits of the H’arpeggione.
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Killick, nee Erik Hinds, a moderately well-known fruit-basket in those (annoying) little improv circles, gained wider rep with his track-by-track tackle of Slayer\'s Reign in Blood via the h\'arpegggione - this really fucked acoustic thingo that\'s sorta like a harp and a sitar and a fiddle and ends up sounding oh so neo-mysto-hillbillean with every other thumb \'n\' forefinger pluck. Really. Killick\'s latest, The Amplifucker, is couched in the \"Appalachian Trance Metal\" construct and brutally operates as an insto in vivo go-at-it, sorta slap the ass and wiggle the face and let the fingers do the walkin\'. Oh, whoa shit: Derek Bailey, Ali Akbar Khan, Peter Kowald, Harry Miller, Buschi Niebergall, Dock Boggs, Slayer\'s King & Hanneman, NNCK\'s Matt Heyner, George Maciunas, hours spent staring at the horizon, listening to your stomach growl, and thinking about how great that kindergarten \"glue paste\" smelled all predominately figure in this sonic fucking morass. Unearthly sound dealt in soundly earthly fashion. This shit is more organic than any vegetable I could ever hope to consume. If people weren\'t inherently foolish, this would be record of the year. In any year. Eighteen tracks from Solponticello.
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