US project BAPTIZER is the creative vehicle of Jim Baptizer, and constitutes of music he have made himself with or without the help of additional musicians. The Baptizer EP from 2013 is his contribution to US label Silber Records ongoing series of “5 in 5” productions, where artists invited to contribute material for EPs with a total length of 5 minutes that should consist of 5 compositions.

The challenge for the artists making contributions to this projects is to be able to create something worthwhile, and in the case of Baptizer it would appear that he have chosen to edit one or more improvised performances into selected highlights lasting for a minute each. None of them comes across as finalized compositions in any manner, but comes across as fragments taken out of a greater context. While these fragments are intriguing the lack of context does make them come across as unfulfilled, from the opening minutes guitar drone and rhythms that sounds like a train with a train whistle sound, the following beefy guitar riff and drone and the concluding two segments of a more frail, psychedelic nature all have a fairly strong feeling of elements somewhat out of place.

The third fragment, untitled like the rest, is somewhat more alluring. Still a fragment, but the percussion, reverberating psychedelic guitar and spoken words that makes up this one has a bit more of a conclusive feel to it, one doesn’t get quite as strong an impression of this one truly belonging to a greater and much longer whole.

Still, if you have a taste for artists exploring the field of improvised music by way of guitar riffs, drones and gentler psychedelic oriented escapades and you have an interest in brief, select highlights from those you can do much worse with 5 minutes of your time than listening to this production.

My rating: 64/100