Today's Cassette, May 9, 2017.

It has been a long time since I've done one of these.  And I should do them more often, since I still have a big pile of cassettes, and a couple of machines to play them with.

In the player today was Salmonmoose, released on saxophonist John Oswald's Mystery Tape Laboratory label.  It's a reworking of live improvisations Oswald, guitarist Henry Kaiser, and trumpeter Toshinori Kondo recorded in several places in Canada in 1978 and '79.  Instead of a strictly linear presentation of the material as recorded it was reworked in a montage fashion.  Some nice low key free improv on this one, and certainly one of the rarest cassettes I've got. 

HK On Air, 1981.

Stumbled across an interesting interview with Bay Area improvising guitarist Henry Kaiser at archive.org.  It's from September 14, 1981 and appeared on the radio show Ode to Gravity, recorded at KPFA studios in Berkeley, California.  It's interesting to hear him comment about the problems  he had recording his then about to be released album Aloha on a multitrack digital tape recorder, then a new technology and today, some 28 years later, almost an obsolescent one.  It's also interesting to listen to some of his comments on the kinds of music he was interested in at the time in comparison to what he would be doing 5 years later, when he would incorporate a lot more vocal oriented music into his repetoire, although with his own unique take on it.  But even in 1981 he was beginning to move beyond the strict free improvisation that had been the hallmark of his earlier albums.

Keith Rowe Goes Boutique?

These days there are a lot of small companies, generally refered to as boutique makers, that make guitar effects pedals. One of the more original and distinctive makes is Zachary Vex's ZVex line, a collection of boxes known for their funky graphics and imaginative circuitry in a market that tends towards making variations on Ibanez Tube Screamers. But even given the originality of Zvex's stomp boxes I was rather surprised to see in some recent pictures of Keith Rowe tonight that he's apparently started using a couple of their products. Rowe is not what one would call a conventional guitarist. Indeed many folks would question whether he's a guitar player at all. A founding member of the improvised music group AMM Rowe lays his guitar on a table and manipulates it in very unguitar like ways, uses all sorts of odd things to excite it's strings, and feeds radio and other audio signals through it's pickups. He is not the kind of guy who sits around reading Guitar Player to see what the latest hip trends for trendy guitarist are. Yet he's now using devices that those kind of folks would think of as cool and hip. One appears to be a Lo Fi Loop Junky, a low tech, low fidelity device that allows you to record up to 20 seconds of audio and loop it. This wouldn't be that much of a surprise, since of late Rowe had been using a Boss RC20 Loop Station. Can't tell what the other box might be.

There was a personal irony for me in reporting Derek Bailey's death. Today I purchased Extrapolation, John McLaughlin's first album under his own name from 1969. The drummer on it was Bailey collaborator Tony Oxley. Incidently if you're a fan of late '60s jazz or McLaughlin check this one out. Saxophonist John Surman gets plenty of solo time, and in at least one place sounds to my ears a bit like Pharoah Sanders.

Sad news to report. Guitarist Derek Bailey has apparently died in London at age 75, although some reports state he died in Barcelona. Bailey began playing guitar at a young age and eventually became a professional musician playing in various conventional contexts. By the early '60s his playing began to move away from conventional forms. Initially playing contemporary jazz the trio Joseph Holbrook, which also included younger musicians Tony Oxley and Gavin Bryars, eventually became one of the first groups to play what became known as free improvisation. Bailey developed what he called a non idiomatic form of playing that was unique to itself, and would go on to play with numerous musicians of various genres, as well as extensive stints of solo playing and collaborations with dancers like Japanese Butoh dancer Min Tanaka and tapdancer Will Gaines. Despite his comment about having little interest in recorded music Bailey released numerous albums in his lifetime, his last being this year's Carpal Tunnel on John Zorn's Tzadik label. He also ran the Incus label which chronicled the free improv scene, and whose fate is likely in jeopardy given his death.

Bailey's playing isn't for everyone. To many what he does sounds like random noises strung together. But for those whose ears can hear it there is melody there, just not the kind of melody you're likely to hum walking down the street on a sunny day.

Just spent some time reading the first bits of Ben Watson's new bio of free improvising guitarist Derek Bailey via the time honoured nuisance making activity of standing for a while in a bookstore.  Very interesting and amusing stuff reading about how he grew up in 1930s England and his early days as a professional guitarist.   Reading about the conditions of his childhood reminds me of the similar conditions that Bill Wyman describes from his childhood in his autobio/Stones history.  For that matter the thought just popped to mind of how my own father grew up in rural Saskatchewan in the 1940s.  Arguably better conditions than they did, but still they didn't have electricity on the Gueguen farm for the first few years of his life, and when they did get electricity it was via an on farm battery plant and not from the provincial electricity grid.  That would come several years later.  Anyways I hope that my local library gets a copy of the Bailey bio, as I just don't have 50 bucks to drop on a single book for the foreseeable future.  Other expenses take priority.