Derek Bailey, Highlights?

[schiksalgemeinschaft]

aida
solo guitar vol.2
lace
music and dance (with a dancer, and rain)
saisoro (with ruins)
ballads

[jon abbey]

my favorite derek bailey recording - in fact one of my favorite improv recordings by anyone - is Pleistozaen Mit Wasser with cecil taylor. especially the acoustic half where derek really stretches & explores some new things and cecil, once he gets to the piano, plays inside. a really great set from them both. they also played at tonic but i dont have a recording of that - if anyone does, i would be eternally grateful

I was at that show, cool stuff. in general, Bailey was in prime form in his last few excursions to NYC, he seemed to really feel comfortable here and was pretty great everytime I saw him.

also, I believe Derek and Keith did at least one duo set in the UK somewhere, and had another planned which fell through. Keith told me the story once, but I forget the specifics, sorry.

[RFKorp]

lace

Quoted for emphasis. This album doesn't often enough get the props it deserves. So good.

Also, Domestic and Public Pieces.

And his duos with Susie Ibarra. Bids and Deadal are both great CDs

[Dohol]

lace

Quoted for emphasis. This album doesn't often enough get the props it deserves. So good.

Yup...

[J.F.]

Threads for recommendations often turn out to mention nearly each and every record the artist at hand issued, but here I go nevertheless:

I particularly love
Harras (with Zorn + Parker)
guitar, drum 'n' bass
Live at Wigmore Hall (with Braxton 74)
the already mentioned Aida
London Concert (with E.Parker 75)
ICP 004 (duet with Bennink 1969)

+ his contributions to several S.M.E. LPs (all quintet line ups as it turns out: "Karyobin", "What do you think?" "Quintessence"/"85 Minutes")

When it comes to his solo stuff, my favorite period probably is the one around 74, when he used "stereo amplification". Uh... I believe that basically was his guitar playing-signals going into two seperately footpedal-handled amplifiers... anyway resulting in a complex web of "natural" rather dry string/plucking sounds plus typically "volume-pedaled" amplified, more voluminous "cloudy" guitar sounds.
I believe he also used further extensions at his guitar at that time (I remember a loose string coming into action as well, though I don't associate a specific sound with that).

Though I immensely enjoy some the later acustic solo recordings as well occasionally (something like "Drop me off at 96th" or how it's called).

His short duet with Lovens on "Idylle und Katastrophen" is fantastic!


- anyway... one of my 6-8 favorite musicians in the world of free jazz/free improv

[Damon_Smith]

Favorites of mine yet to be mentioned:
"One Time" with Stevens and Kent Carter
"Figuring" duo with Barre Phillips
All of Iskra (even w/o Derek) the improvisation box being my favorite.

[mitch]

my favorite derek bailey recording - in fact one of my favorite improv recordings by anyone - is Pleistozaen Mit Wasser with cecil taylor. especially the acoustic half where derek really stretches & explores some new things and cecil, once he gets to the piano, plays inside. a really great set from them both. they also played at tonic but i dont have a recording of that - if anyone does, i would be eternally grateful

Yeah, good call, that's a fucking amazing record.

I don't really have much to add, I like lots of what's already been mentioned by anyone else. Solo albums [New sights..., Solo Guitar Vol. 1., Takes Fakes, Aida, Lace, Domestic and Public Pieces], the duos with drummers [any of the Han Bennink ones, esp. the Organ of Corti one, Soho Suies w/ Oxley, Dart Drug], Iskra 1903, the duets with Evan Parker and with Braxton. The SME 85 minutes concert, Topography of the Lungs, Music Improvisation Company. Don't think I saw Fuck de Boere mentioned, that's pretty sweet/nasty, also the Nipples stuff.

I kind of thought that Carpal Tunnel was pretty ballsy, I like how dessicated that sounds.

-mm

[will]

Limescale! Also, I picked up the two duos with Susie Ibarra after seeing her trio live a few years ago, I wasn't that excited by them.

[bedouin]

Like Raymond Carver, though, Bailey had a legion of imitators who suck some of the glow off his accomplishments. It's a shame--he was a titan.

Interesting.
I hear traces of Bailey on Akiyama, but Akiyama seems to have filtered a lot of influences into his playing. Manuel Mota recently reminded me of Bailey, but having seen Bailey (at least on youtube) his art/technique seems pretty impossible to imitate.
Maybe there are a lot of guitar players elsewhere, can you expand?

[Dohol]

Like Raymond Carver, though, Bailey had a legion of imitators who suck some of the glow off his accomplishments. It's a shame--he was a titan.

Interesting.
I hear traces of Bailey on Akiyama, but Akiyama seems to have filtered a lot of influences into his playing. Manuel Mota recently reminded me of Bailey, but having seen Bailey (at least on youtube) his art/technique seems pretty impossible to imitate.
Maybe there are a lot of guitar players elsewhere, can you expand?

Oh..guitarists beholden to Bailey are legion. He's like this gigantic gravitational object. Once you're under his influence, it's difficult to avoid orbiting him..It's a struggle.

The players with the strongest ties to Bailey ( and to my ears, occasionally imitators )
are people like John Russell, Henry Kaiser, Eugene Chadbourne, Roger Smith, Ian Brighton, Elliot Sharp...the list goes on and on.


If you play guitar, Baileys impossible to ignore.

[Dan Warburton]

It might be more illuminating to find out which Bailey albums people here don't like. (If I had to pick one, I'd choose the Tzadik thing with Tacuma and Weston.)

[jon abbey]

there are tons of half-assed ones, Derek didn't seem to say no a lot, especially towards the end. I personally didn't understand all the acclaim for Ballads, to name one high profile one.

[faster]

The "gospel" one with Amy Denio and Dennis Palmer is a pretty brutal listen. I got through it, but just once.

[RFKorp]

It might be more illuminating to find out which Bailey albums people here don't like. (If I had to pick one, I'd choose the Tzadik thing with Tacuma and Weston.)

I actually rather like Mirakle! Works a lot better than that drum&bass one in my opinion. And there are definitely Bailey albums I'd say just fall kind of flat and bore me. It certainly doesn't get boring.

[Joda]

I personally didn't understand all the acclaim for Ballads, to name one high profile one.

Yeah, that was the first Derek Bailey disc I bought and then I sold it almost immediately. That album would be the reason I never looked into his music again until I heard that nice Incus Taps LP on Organ of Corti.

[jon abbey]

yeah, it's just brief heads with middling Derek in between, I really didn't get it.

[gohleekwang]

i m no good on bailey's output, i would said Aida really blow me away back in the first listen, an all time master piece on my list. but in 2005 somebody got me to listen to most of his tzadik releases and i was very disappointed.

[schiksalgemeinschaft]

yeah, it's just brief heads with middling Derek in between, I really didn't get it.

it was the first Bailey record I heard, and it even was one of the first albums in that idiom I heard. It served as a nice bridgehead between jazz & impro.

[the bird]

This I think are a few highlights of Bailey's recordings:

Aida
Ballads
The Topography of the Lungs (with Parker and Bennink)
The London Concert (with Evan Parker)
Soho Suites (with Toney Oxley)
Live in Okayama 1987 (with Brotzmann and Toyozumi)
Moment Precieux (with Braxton)
Moment Precieux (with Cecil Taylor)
No Waiting (with Joëlle Léandre)

[Dohol]

Moment Precieux (with Braxton)

Actually, I prefer the earlier duos. The edition I have is a double lp on Innercity called Live at Wigmor, though I think ( I think ) this stuff was first released on Incus.