Search - Derek Bailey :: Lace

Absolute concentration

N. Dorward | Toronto, ON Canada | 02/01/2001

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Derek Bailey's music has by this point in his career become almost impossibly unpredictable in its variety of forms: a recent batch of CDs I got, for instance, includes an encounter with a jazz-funk band (_Mirakle_), a duet with the free-jazz percussionist Susie Ibarra (_Daedal_), & an album consisting entirely of feedback (_String Theory_). Nonetheless, there's a basic rule with Bailey: think small. His favourite & often most effective formats are the duo (his label Incus puts out two different series of duet discs, for instance--guitar/wind instrument & guitar/percussion) & the solo recital. _Lace_ is one of the first places to go for Bailey's solo music--if you've never heard him play before, try this disc. It's an all-acoustic concert, recorded in LA--two long tracks & a short encore. Track one is (as usual with Bailey of this period--cf. _Aida_) whimsically ended when an alarm clock goes off.Bailey's music is as always spare but detailed--his approach is to keep musical gestures very distinct & very clear. Rather than the smooth streams of notes that typify conventional guitar playing, he likes to use combinations of very different events--consecutive notes may come from an open string, a fretted string, a harmonic, or some nonstandard sound (e.g. rubbing the pick over the string or producing a percussive unpitched slap from the strings). Such an approach sounds rather willful, but this disc is rather beguiling in its way, in part because of the nice resonant sound Bailey gets out of his instrument. Throughout the music convinces because of its absolute integrity & concentration; comparisons with Thelonious Monk's solo discs aren't entirely absurd. A fine disc; fans of it will also want to track down the slightly earlier _Drop Me Off at 96th_ (Scatter), which is equally fine."