Music and Dance [Live]

 

 

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This disc is a collaboration between Min Tanaka, a dancer, Mr. Bailey, free-improv guitar veteran, and the sounds of the evironment (i.e., autos passing by rain from a leaky roof, etc.). I heard about this cd and was intrigued enough to buy. Having become more familiar with Bailey since then, I realized that buying any Bailey disc without researching 1st is a big mistake. As with basically all improvisors, Bailey dooms himself to inconsistent efforts by depending solely on improvistion and by being determined to be prolific (for some reason, that's important to some people). So, Bailey's work varies widely in style and especially quality. Personally, I prefer his solo work, as it's usually very reliable, though there is sadly little of that widely available, as Bailey is obsessed with the collaborative effort. Which is OK except that some collaborations work and some don't. If you already know Bailey, or pretty much any imporv artist for that matter, than you know this already. But as a warning to those exploring Bailey or the free-improv genre as a whole, buy albums after careful research only, or you'll waste alot of money on garbage and filler.
Anyways, on to the review. In all fairness, this disc may fail simply because the visual element is missing. After all, this was an audio-visual collaboration, where Bailey was more than likely acting and reacting mostly to Tanaka's movement, not sound, and Tanaka was reacting with movement to Bailey's sounds (logically). So this release was a bad idea in the 1st place, as you only get 1/2 the picture (gee, why the heck did I buy this?). The label must have assumed that the audio element stands well enough on it's own. They assumed wrong. ...he makes no effort (that can be HEARD in this recording at least) to play with or against Tanaka or the evironmental sounds at all. Tanaka doesn't seem to either (though again, with only half the picture we'll never know). It's as if both artists are acting on their own without even being aware of the others presence. While there are a few mildly interesting moments, none of it comes together in an interesting or appealing manner, and most of it sounds like sonic idiocy. Dissapointing from guy who's capable of really good stuff...

What did you expect?! This music is IMPROVISED. Derek Bailey has always deliberately avoided any semblance of traditional music from time structures to doing so much as repeating a phrase. Every note that he has ever played so far as can be determined by his recorded work is through composed. The basic idea that the liner notes try to explain is that for Bailey this music represents a collaboration in that he is interacting both with the movement and sound of Min Tanaka dancing as well as with the environment, the sounds of rain and cars moving outside, the sounds we ear all the time but never hear as music. To say this is just noise is like saying that Frank Lloyd Wright just made boxy houses, taking no notice of the environment in which they are built. This being said I should also mention that the music has a very serene quality to it. There is not so much of the frenetic energy that Bailey is sometimes capable of but instead he chooses to set a mood which in some ways contrasts with the intensity of the dancer and the rain. It almost makes the rain sound violent. This music was recorded in 1980 I'm glad to have an opportunity to hear its beauty now.

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