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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