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Derek Bailey vids

61. Derek Bailey - Ballads

This is the first time I've used the phrase genius in my blog.
Bailey learned guitar as a child, then went on to play in northern club jazz bands, big bands, TV bands through the 60's. He could play pretty much any style he wanted to, expertly, and did, until he found his own style.
Bailey was instrumental in the burgeoning improvised jazz scene in 1960's London with Spontaneous Music Ensemble, Evan Parker & AMM despite being fiercely critical of improvised jazz styles. During the prog, crossover jazz era Bailey used minimal effects, relying on his virtuosity on guitar to produce new sounds and ideas. Bailey fought genre labels by calling his sound 'non-ideomatic' i.e. if playing within the realms of a genre or style of music, how can that be truly improvising? as style has impinged upon the imagination of the individual playing the music. Bailey was happy to work with all types and players of music, noise, drum'n'bass, whatever, to expand his vocabulary and produce creative friction, he was a huge enthusiast of all field of music, or as MES puts it, ' the grist that curtails the mill, will make us strong'.
Ballads, sees Bailey improvising on Jazz standards in a way no other guitarist could, a sensitive, clear, but full frontal sound, keeping a hang on melody, but in a new language we have not yet understood. If you have never heard him, give the record some listens and you may find the artistry and imagination within quite awesome. Forget jazz lineage, Bailey stands amongst Bach, MES, James Brown & Beefheart as individuals who are able to create a music immediately arresting yet strange, like a human muscle we weren't aware of until we were shown how to use it.

                                                        



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Flower-Corsano vids

62. Flower/Corsano Duo - Radiant Mirror (2007)

Chris Corsano is a vital cog in current underground music, as a mercurial drummer from New England with a hand in many groups and a pivotal role in widening the possibilities for instrumentalists in the 2000's from many genres, from his background in community punk/hardcore and free jazz fire music. He helped to introduce jazz to free folk to pop etc.. from the ecstatic jazz of Paul Flagherty's duo to worldwide touring with Bjork, his is a singular path, successful because of an astonishing virtuosity and imagination on the drums. I can't think of another drummer I would listen to solo!
Radiant Mirror was his first collab with Mick Flower of Vibracathedral Orchestra, Leeds based improv drone merchants.
This stands as a peak of many with Corsano on drums/percussion, Flower on Japan Banjo aka Shahi baaja, according to Corsano's website a cross between a dulcimer and drone harp, or a sort of electrified bulbul tarang. None the wiser huh! well then it sounds like an electrified drone heavy sitar.
Separated into 3 movements, Earth, Wind & Fire, Radiant Mirror both rocks out into heavily psychedelic peaks, whilst allowing for exploratory passages of sound whilst never letting your interest wane, and aimed directly at your third eye. Corsano as ever when given the space, uses the kit in a way that you can easily forget is percussion, using tuning, tabla and somehow wind rushing effects, reconfiguring time with rhythm and poly rhythm, casting time into detonations, burning voids and ultrasonic vibrations of Earth.

Black Dice vids

63. Black Dice - Beaches & Canyons (2002), Cone Toaster 12" (2003)

 Originating from Rhode Island, Providence and attending the school of design which brought us Lightning Bolt. Black Dice were at the vanguard of a change in sound and attitude that affected future thinking pop and rock at the change of the century.
Early Black Dice were a thrash group specialising in particularly violent and noisy gigs, as they developed improv crept into the sound and early skunk infused meetings with the nascent Animal Collective and Wolf Eyes produced lengthy industrial soundscapes. In fact despite the face value disparity between these groups, they all admit an influence on each other.
Black Dice's new found experimentalist tendencies and creativity, along with the huge influence of Boredoms, whose sounds, live sets and design, cannot be underestimated, and rips through all of this scene like a large scale epiphany, contributed to the creation of Beaches & Canyons. Also in their favor Beaches & Canyons was picked up by James Murphy's DFA label, adding a cool element attractive to followers of LCD/Rapture etc.
Thoroughly modern Beaches & Canyons combine heavily treated guitar, primal vocals, heavy percussion and loops oscillators, ring modulators etc, into a music that builds and crescendos repeatedly, imagine a disco Sun Ra covering Melvins. Occasionally bird like modular feedback squeaks faze into lopsided beatbox rhythms disturbed by bullfrogs. Epic album closer 'Big Drop' fades in from the sound of waves, kicks up a shitstorm of vertical drumming and ends with excellent screaming, none of which seems angry of negative, in fact the whole record is exploratory and euphoric. Somehow the overall feeling of the record has something of the majesty and power of nature about it.
Cone Toaster followed Beaches & Canyons, and displays a less organic, patchwork, dance influenced sound, but remained amazing in it's textures. Yamatsuka EYE was listening, as he provides a B-side remix of Endless Happiness from Beaches & Canyons, which unsurprisingly finds detail in the percussion.
Black Dice continue to be fascinating, and I'll be seeing their LOUD show this weekend at ATP! Woop Woop.

White Stripes Influences

White Stripes vids

64. The White Stripes - De Stijl (2000) & White Blood Cells (2001)

The White Stripes were obviously, proudly retro. However that is not the whole story. Jack & Meg undertook the most successful re imagining of American electric blues and rock since Led Zep or Grunge. This was partly due to them finding the best or essence of rock, keeping it simple and having a bitchin rhythm section, which had been neglected by previous post punk rock groups who tended to concentrate on innovations in melody, grunge included. If musically they retroactively distilled what was great about rock and blues, thematically and aesthetically TWS provided something new, using the red, white & black line art and uniforms, name checking the Dutch De Stijl art movement. Alongside Jack's gentlemanly, old fashioned and critical stance; often in opposition of the original rock subject matter, which could be deliberately disrespectful to drive that generation gap wedge home. Jack however is not twee and is able to reference the value of friends and being nice to parents with bollocks a thousand fringed indie types could never muster.

The White Stripes stood out in a Detroit surrounded by a garage revival, Soledad Brothers, Detroit Cobras and the Von Bondies were peers of TWS and following the first run of records kicked off a shitstorm of by numbers garage types, culminating in the likes of The Hives and that other group I can't remember.

Of the two albums, De Stijl their second after a raw bluesy debut has a more garage pop element, despite containing more blues covers of Son House and Blind Willie McTell. It came out on Sympathy for the Record Industry, who brought us Rocket from the Crypt no less, true ancestors of this music, a smaller audience awaited this release and TWS are more reveling in knowingness, namedropping art and philosophies in the liner notes. The cerebral psued in me always prefers De Stijl, although over time, sonically speaking TWS breakout third White Blood Cells has to be the best.

Actually the best WS experience is to see them live, as I did post De Stijl in a small venue. The energy, guitar noise and supernatural levels of non verbal between Jack & Meg are spellbinding and is in my top ten gigs. Otherwise try the John Peel Maida Vale sessions recorded throughout this period for a ferocious, fast and loose WS.

At the time White Blood Cells correctly anticipated with it's artwork the fame, adulation and ostracism from the Detroit scene they helped to birth, and also introduces a Morrissey like paranoid element from Jack, often shown in those who feel out of time. This adds to the albums interest, and sets TWS on the fame trajectory which has culminated in Jacks current liaisons with models, superstars etc.