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

Karate - 595

I feel bemusement brought on by oddly formed expectations.

As you can hear above, Karate is thirty-five percent from Phish towards Fugazi.  Well, Fugazi at the time of The Argument.  This makes them a pretty interesting band.  Built to Spill has guitar playing, but only within the rock genre.  Tortoise plays a sort of jazz/indie hybrid, which is how people label Karate, but Tortoise’s wordless, mathematically intriguing, rhythmic compositions disqualify them as purveyors of popular music.  In terms of songwriting and attitude if not guitar pyrotechnics Karate actually sounds quite like The Sea and Cake.

Karate is the power trio version of the Sea and Cake.

Now, the thing is, I know of Karate mostly through Tape Op Magazine.  Actually, audio device reviewer Andy Hong recorded all of Karate’s studio albums.  Aha, here is where the expectations are formed, you say.

Well, counter-expectations.  If there is one band which Tape Op editor Larry Crane has famously pilloried, decried, and shamed at every opportunity, it is Steely Dan.  And if there is one band that is known for playing jazz-rock fusion with intricate songs and awesome guitar playing, it is Steely Dan.

Of course, and rightly so, the Tape Op people deride not their music per se, as much as their album-making process.  The overly mannered, spend-three-weeks-tuning-the-snare-drum, hire-outrageously-talented-and-expensive-session-musicians, hyphenated approach is the antithesis of the “Tape Op aesthetic” of making do, doing it yourself, and just doing it.

So it’s an ends and means question.  A sane person does not believe ends justify means.  On the other hand, I have made a practice of considering the object, the work, rather than the circumstances of its creation.  That is a pillar of the St. John’s College education which I continue to value.

Karate shows that all of Steely Dan’s labor and belaboring was unnecessary, but in the end, all that exists is a piece of sound, which must be judged on its own merits.

Hmm.

Tetsu Inoue - Waterloo Terminal

Compared to Fragment Dots and Psycho-Acoustic, the two Tzadik albums I’m more familiar with, Waterloo Terminal is like a field recording.

Imagine two computers, A and B.  Drop computer A down a flight of stairs. Now, imagine a microphone in the stairwell.  Split the signal of the microphone, record it into computer A, falling down a flight of stairs, and into computer B, safely stored on a cart without wheels at the top of the stairwell.

Now, here’s the important part.  Drop each computer, that’s right, both A and B, down the stairs. While they are falling, have them play the audio files from step 1.  Waterloo Terminal is what you hear from computer B, and the Tzadik albums are what you hear from computer A.

(blame Zach Parker for inspiring that description)

Saw Horse - Raised By Robots (track starts quiet/noisy)

I still like this album.  It’s a little episodic, and for that reason it works best knowing the story: a radio becomes sentient, and when it realizes it is trapped in a metal chassis it has words to say.  In that context, the episodes are like the radio flipping itself through the stations, falling back into the static, dropping in and out of the middle of different sounds.

This account did occur to me while I was making it, but not as a directive.  I have to admit, the process of making and putting together was dominant, and various stories arose as necessary.  But the stories work.

I’m really grateful to Emily Brock, Linda Kelen, and Lea Brock for sending me their thoughts about this album.

Many musicians say that they do or don’t listen to their own works.  I listen to mine, and not just narcissistically, and not just because I enjoy them.  Often, I can’t believe that they work, so I’ll see if I was justified in leaving them in whatever state.