Daily Listen by Brian Brock

Derek Bailey - Guitar, Drums ‘n’ Bass (hear “Concrete”)

Evidence that drum ‘n’ bass overwhelms whatever it encounters.  Not one of Derek Bailey’s greatest albums, but it is one of his more interesting.  It’s an invaluable piece of sound, for introducing people who might shrink from Bailey’s classics, for listening to when you can’t decide whether to listen to regular sounding techno beats or distorted free jazz guitar, or just as the unique thing that it is.  In a way, Derek Bailey is doing something really cool, as the old free jazz head jamming on top of the new thing - but really, isn’t it surprising that there isn’t a similar disc from every jazz musician?

Supposedly this album sprang from Bailey’s habit of jamming along with the local drum and bass or techno or electronic music station (by the way, are people really happy calling these types of music “electronic dance music”?  Don’t they yearn for a handy term like “rock” or “classical”?).  I think that a simple recording of that would convince better - in a way, this album is like some ethnomusicologist writing down the elements of some faraway music and recreating it in the lab.

It’s out of print, get it here:

Derek Bailey - Guitar, Drums ‘n’ Bass

or, if you don’t like to see ads, you can go to this emporium of lost classics and deadly noises, I assume the download there is pretty much the same, and you may find some other pretty things:

Blog of somebody calling himself bigfatsatanist

Dominic Duval’s String Ensemble - Live in Concert

It’s a spider web of extruded aluminum.  Minnows and geese are caught up, bubbling and squawking while the Mrs. winds them up, and the goose tries to eat the fish.

Listen to this stuff loud, if possible.  The amount of attention you give to good free jazz is directly proportional to the enjoyment you can reap from it.  It sounds like shit if you don’t pay attention.  This is only true up to a point - the good associations developed from listening to it eventually overwhelm the disorienting squall and you can do the dishes or cook while it plays.

The texture changes clearly from track to track in this music, which signals that they are not just hacking away at “free jazz” but actually doing something specific in each piece.

There’s some odd dated liner notes in this CD (from 1998) about cyberspace.  Check it out in the next post.

Osorezan - Mimidokodesuka

This is a Jim O’Rourke free jazz show from 2005.  I was excited to see him and Darin Gray collaborating again after Brise Glace’s When in Vanitas…, one of my favorite albums.  That album rocks.  Recorded with Steve Albini, it’s a cut up and mashed through tour of dark corners of the backwoods of the music of the people.

Mimidokodesuka is really just a straightforward free jazz trio.  Electric guitar, bass, drums; they go at it for 40 minutes or so, then it stops.  Papa Bear, Mama Bear, Baby Bear, they try the various bowls of porridge before going to bed.

The thing about free jazz, it’s so easy to make something that superficially resembles the best efforts of the best players.  I mean, go to a construction site.  Go listen to babies crying.  Go listen to the Minutemen when they first picked up their guitars and didn’t know you had to tune them and thought it was just preference: “hey, I play with the strings loose, man.”

So the difference between an intentional success and an apparent success is very difficult to perceive.  The music needs to develop and carry forth a common vision which responds instantly to any aberration, intentional or otherwise.