Lace [Import]

Derek Bailey | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (December 8, 1999)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Import
• Label: Emanem
• ASIN: B00000JZY1
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #811,396 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. Let's Hope We're All in the Right Place [#] - Derek Bailey

2. We Could Be Here for a Few Hours [#] - Derek Bailey

3. Which Bit Would You Like Again? [#] - Derek Bailey

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Absolute concentration, January 31, 2001

By 

N. Dorward "obsessive reviewer" (Toronto, ON Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Lace (Audio CD)

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.