Customer Reviews

Mirakle

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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....

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.

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.

Bailey's guitar comes at you from all angles. It may cut and bruise at first but when one's mind sinks it into thick molasses of his great rhythm section, one realises it works with and not against them. Like "few drops of whiskey in a spoonful of honey". Tzadik really summed it up the best: "Noise has never sounded so in tune, funk has never sounded so f***ed up." Some may be well advised to have a "soothing" and less demanding CD within reach for a speedy recovery from the shock after 70 miraKulous minutes.

This disc simply ROCKS! I've always loved Derek Bailey, but for most folks, his fully improv can be hard to get into. But Tacuma and Weston make up an absolutely stunning rhythm section which render DB's playing "almost accessible". It's a truly infectuous recording, and an absolute listening joy from start to finish.

this man PLAYS his guitar - and while many will NOT hear anything masterful in his harmonics, scrunched clicked muted strings, or 'random' sounding polychromatic 'chords' this man *is* a genius.
the powerful funk/rock grooves that he lays his guitar work over are instinctive and imperative - they move you -
Bailey believes in taking the guitar in a holistic approach -
this is the deal - 99% of all music falls within a small range of possible sounds that could be made with any instrument.
Bailey attempts to break that mode and stretch the envelope.
Does it always succeed?
I think musicians will love it -

What are you folks hearing? I wish I knew...This was a CD that really helped put me off Derek Bailey. I thought: "Free Improv, OK, I love it. But when its virtual inventor kind of shows that what it means is play whatever you were gonna play anyway, no matter what else is going on then...what?" Well, this is not what is REALLY going on here, but sometimes it sounds that way. Then I heard it blasting over speakers in a club and I realized that if I didn't come to it with any expectations, sonically it had its thing. Jamaal and Calvin have always been two of my favorites, although I wouldn't say this is their finest hour. SO...? It is what it is; I'm glad it exists, but this really shouldn't be your favorite Derek Bailey disc. I mean, PEOPLE! Come on! It is not true that anything which is great is better with a "Groove" under it. Time to get that Webern box set and hang out with it a bit. What a world...

i've liked bailey in other settings, and i've heard some tacuma that i've thought was all right, but i took a chance on this and it just sounds like they took just any ol' derek bailey improv and stuck it on top of the rhythm section -- which might work better with his acoustic guitar, actually. here it just sounds like an experiment gone wrong.