robertomusci:

Derek Bailey

Derek Bailey (29 January 1930 – 25 December 2005) was an English avant-garde guitarist and leading figure in the free improvisation movement.Bailey was born in Sheffield, England ; he found work as a guitarist and session musician in clubs, radio, dance hall bands, and so on, playing with many performers including Gracie Fields, Bob Monkhouse and Kathy Kirby, and on television programs such as Opportunity Knocks. Bailey was also part of a Sheffield-based trio founded in 1963 with Tony Oxley and Gavin Bryars called “Joseph Holbrooke”. Although originally performing relatively “conventional” jazz this group became increasingly free in direction.Bailey moved to London in 1966, frequenting the Little Theatre Club run by drummer John Stevens. Here he met many other like-minded musicians, such as saxophonist Evan Parker, trumpet player Kenny Wheeler and double bass player Dave Holland. These players often collaborated under the umbrella name of the Spontaneous Music Ensemble. In this year Bailey also formed the Music Improvisation Company with Parker, percussionist Jamie Muir and Hugh Davies on homemade electronics, a project that continued until 1971. He was also a member of the Jazz Composer’s Orchestra and Iskra 1903, a trio with double-bass player Barry Guy and trombone player Paul Rutherford that was named after a newspaper published by the Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin.In 1970, Bailey founded the record label Incus with Tony Oxley, Evan Parker and Michael Walters.Along with a number of other musicians, Bailey was a co-founder of Musics magazine in 1975. This was described as “an impromental experivisation arts magazine” and circulated through a network of like-minded record shops, arguably becoming one of the most significant jazz publications of the second half of the 1970s, and instrumental in the foundation of the London Musicians Collective. 1976 saw Bailey form Company, an ever-changing collection of like-minded improvisors, which at various times has included Anthony Braxton, Tristan Honsinger, Misha Mengelberg, Lol Coxhill, Fred Frith, Steve Beresford, Steve Lacy, Johnny Dyani, Leo Smith, Han Bennink, Eugene Chadbourne, Henry Kaiser, John Zorn, Buckethead and many others. Company Week, an annual week-long free improvisational festival organised by Bailey, ran until 1994.In 1980, he wrote the book Improvisation: Its Nature and Practice. This was adapted by UK’s Channel 4 into a four-part TV series in the early ’90s, edited and narrated by Bailey. Bailey died in London on Christmas Day, 2005. 

For listeners and for guitar players , Bailey’s distinctive style is extreme discontinuity,with enormous intervals between consecutive notes, and rather than aspiring to the consistency of timbre typical of most guitar-playing . He differs in approach to almost any other guitarist who preceded him. Bailey uses the guitar as a sound-making, rather than a “music”-making, device, meaning, he rarely plays melodies or harmonies in a conventional sense, but instead pulls out of his instrument every conceivable type of sound using every imaginable technique.On electric guitar, Bailey is capable of the most gratingly harsh, distortion-laden heavy-metalisms; unamplified, he’s as likely to mimic a set of wind chimes. Bailey’s guitar is much like John Cage’s prepared piano; both innovations enhanced the respective instrument’s percussive possibilities. Bailey was able to extend the possibilities of the instrument in radical ways, obtaining a far wider array of sounds than are usually heard. Listen to Baley’s music is a disturbing and unusual event: you must follow the micro melodies that he plays with his “extreme” guitar ,to see the light in the maze of sounds from his performance.

Beware : his music can create genetic mutations in regular listeners.

Selected Discography : 

The Topography of the Lungs , with Evan Parker, Incus, 1970

The Music Improvisation Company,  Incus, 1971

Solo Guitar Volume 1 , Incus recorded 1971

First Duo Concert with Anthony Braxton , Emanem, 1974

Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet , (Obscure Records, 1975

Drops with Andrea Centazzo, Inctus, 1977

Aida ,Incus, 1982

Cyro  with Cyro Baptista, Incus, 1982

Yankees with John Zorn and George Lewis,1983

Figuring with Barre Phillips, Incus, 1987

Village Life with Louis Moholo, Incus 1992

Harras with John Zorn and William Parker, 1995

Guitar, Drums ‘n’ Bass with DJ Ninj, Avant records, 1996

The Sign Of Four with Pat Metheny,Knitting Factory, 1997

Wireforks with Henry Kaiser ,Shanachie/Jazz, 1993

Legend of the Blood Yeti with Thurston Moore  , Incus, 2002

Soshin with Fred Frith ,Ambiances Magnetiques, 2003

Complete discography at : http://www.discogs.com/artist/Derek+Bailey

DVD:

Derek Bailey, Min Tanaka - Mountain Stage ‎Incus Records 1993

John Stevens  / Derek Bailey - Gig ‎ Incus Record 1996

Playing For Friends On 5th Street ‎ Straw Gold Pictures 2004

All Thumbs ‎Incus Records 2009

Live At G’s Club Incus Records 2009

Web Archive : 

http://efi.group.shef.ac.uk/fulltext/mbailin2.html

http://efi.group.shef.ac.uk/fulltext/jungle.html

http://efi.group.shef.ac.uk/mbailey.html

http://www.thewire.co.uk/in-writing/essays/p=10864