Mirakle

Derek Bailey | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (March 28, 2000)
• Original Release Date: March 28, 2000
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Tzadik
• ASIN: B00004NRTB
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #31,647 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Parliament's proclamation that "funk not only moves, it can remove" is apropos for Mirakle. For just as the Philadelphia-rooted rhythm pair of bassist Jamaaldeen Tacuma and drummer Calvin G. Weston continually seeks an in-motion, funky floor on Mirakle, guitarist Derek Bailey snarls, tangles, and bends every bit of motion, as if to trouble the musical dialogue. Just as he did on Guitar, Drums 'n' Bass, he tinkers here with the electric bass and drums formula that underlies legions of jazz-envelope pushers. When Tacuma sounds like he could be on a harmony-melody jag à la Ornette Coleman's Prime Time, Bailey tugs at Weston to break it down, fracturing time and dynamics with wry, distorted compressions of phrase. Bailey has made a ritual of improvising in unusual contexts, and this one ranks with his oddest. It's a blast to hear, first for the dialogues across the funk idiom, and second for the energy the trio expends individually and as a whole. --Andrew Bartlett

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Derek Bailey, funkster, November 11, 2002

By 

N. Dorward "obsessive reviewer" (Toronto, ON Canada) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Mirakle (Audio CD)

In recent years something of a subproject has developed in the Derek Bailey canon, seemingly at the prompting of John Zorn--the Derek Bailey Power Trio. Prior to this disc was the Arcana group that recorded _The Last Wave_ (Bailey plus Tony Williams & Bill Laswell), & a pair of discs with Japan's The Ruins. _Mirakle_ finds him in the company of Jamaaladeen Tacuma & Calvin Weston, & it's indeed something of a miracle that this encounter turns out well. What's striking to this listener is the amount of interaction among the musicians--on his own ground in free-improv situations Bailey frequently avoids obvious interplay or dialogue, but here there's little sense of parallel paths: check out, for instance, his brilliant bobbing & weaving over & under the head-nodding groove that opens "What It Is". Frequently Bailey simply ignores pitch entirely to scrub rhythmically at the strings to create counterrhythms; or he will let a harsh ringing note hang over the tumult below. Actually, I suspect many blindfolded listeners might suppose this a particularly offbeat James Blood Ulmer date.

Listening to this album one hears a strange meeting of two musical worlds--American funk & English avantgarde improv--& one's sense is expanded of what these styles can do, & how flexible they can be. Tacuma and Weston are terrific--it's remarkable how Tacuma's feline, rubbery lines set up grooves that push ahead without locking things down. The improvisations are basically jams in which the American musicians set a groove up & then the trio picks it apart until it falls to pieces, only to be replaced by another. A common method of proceeding--but what's rare in such jamming, & impressive here, is how the segues never seem to be treading water in search of the next idea: this is music packed with moment-by-moment detail & eventfulness.

A strange, compelling & rather addictive album: rather unexpectedly for an album by Derek Bailey it's, er, a lot of fun. A really fine CD: fans of rarefied Brit-improv will probably hate it, but I suspect James Blood Ulmer fans will love it....

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Bring the Noise, Bring in the Funk., June 22, 2000

By 

Douglas T Martin (Alpharetta, GA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Mirakle (Audio CD)

You either love Derek Bailey's playing or you hate it; there's no middle ground. If you love his playing style then you may have your favorite format in which to hear it - acoustic solo, electric and percussion, duets, trios, whatever. This is my favorite - Derek Bailey and Prime Time. On other recordings it sometimes sounds like Derek Bailey is off doing his own noisy abstract thang while everyone else is concentrating on their own. On this recording you can easily connect with the funky, blues-based grooves and hear how Bailey plays with the music. Hearing Derek Bailey riffing along with the groove in the first track was worth the cost of the whole CD. Weston and Tacuma have never sounded better together - even better than on Coleman's "In All Languages". A great - and very funny - recording. But like all Bailey recordings, it's not for the timid.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hendrix meets Miles meets Fripp, May 19, 2006

By 

o dubhthaigh (north rustico, pei, canada) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Mirakle (Audio CD)

As I have intoned before, you know you're getting old when you come upon something spectacular that's been out and about for 6 years. Such is the case with this release by the late English guitarist extraordinaire, Derek Bailey, and his cohorts, Jamaladeen Tacuma on bass and Calvin Weston on drums. Weston is as polyrythmic as Bill Bruford, no mean feat, and Tacuma is positively stunning with the pwoer and the bluesy funk of his commanding performance. I am not sure if this was "composed" in any way, or done a la Miles, but it rings with such sense that the intelligence, as well as the soul, of this music is the raw and real deal.

My other forays into the world of Derek Bailey have included his acoustic workout with Bill Frisell and his very abstract tour de force with Pat Metheny and Paul Wertico in the SIGN OF FOUR recording, one not for the timid. Bailey passed away this past winter and with his passing a very unique artist, and influential musician, and a pioneering spirit flew away from this world. I have no idea whether Robert Fripp was familiar with this effort, but Derek seems to have resolved many of the musical quandries, conundrums, dead ends Fripp hit with the assorted ProjeKcts, post the double trio version of Crimson. And Bailey does them with something in the trunk. At times the rhythm section is as abstract as Bruford and Levin, at times as funky as Billy Cox and Mitch Mitchell, as frontier pushing as Ricky Wellman and Foley McCready. Certainly they are their own men, but in calling forth predecessors and colleagues, they reference a direction in music that had a hard time finding believers. You can believe in this effort. It is genius.

So, if you want to enjoy your next experimental leap into what Music can say when the practitioners are not afraid to do what they do not know how to do, I can recommend no finer effort than Mirakle. It is aptly titled. And it makes the loss of Bailey all the more sorrowful.