| All Incus Videos are currently unavailable but are to be re-issued in DVD format. | |||
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Incus DVD01
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Derek Bailey, solo guitar
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Incus DVD02
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Derek Bailey, solo electric guitar
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Incus SP1
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DVD01 Derek Bailey, solo guitar The British free improvising guitarist Derek Bailey relocated to Barcelona in 2003. |
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Incus DVD03
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Playing for Friends on 5th Street catches free-improv
guitar legend Derek Bailey in an intimate concert for about 40 friends and
fans on December 29, 2001. The friends - fixtures on the downtown scene -
include guitarist Alan Licht, poets Steve Dalachinsky and Yuko Otomo, DMG
proprietors Bruce Lee Gallanter and Manny Maris, and Stephanie and the late
Irving Stone, to whom Bailey dedicated the video release. It was a casual
evening and a casual performance as well. Bailey seems to be working through
ideas, finding little nuances and sitting on them, working through suggestions
before strolling along other paths. The single-camera footage, focused tightly
on the guitarist, is presented with few edits and nicely augmented with various
post-production effects: full screen and letterbox, color and warm sepia halftones
and stop motion lend to the more-than-front-row intimacy of the video. Bailey is
at his best during the 51-minute set, which includes his telling a story about
working in a guitar shop in the 1960s (accompanying himself as he does in his
much sought-after "chats") and a few moments of traditional playing
on the vintage Epiphone hollow-body he bought on Staten Island. |
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Incus Video VD01
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Pedal extremities (17.43) Derek Bailey/Will GainesDerek Bailey, guitar.
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Incus Video VD02
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Sunday (29), and the final day. Up at 6.20am. I used my map to construct an essentially circular route and collected ARTCAMP artworks on my way, official as well as found. At 9.30am we are driven over to the trail leading to the "Mountain Stage" which we ascend in single file, like some safari team. Our friend Hiro leading the way bearing the acoustic guitar, followed by another friend, Risa, then Derek - under his recently acquired farmer's hat, Karen and myself. It is now 10.07am. Derek's acoustic guitar is 'humming' in response to his 'massage', and in response, the insect musicians of Japan become his accompaniment; Min makes minimal movements, developing into more noticable 'dance'. Cameras clack interminably, birds sing, kids make sounds; two solos simultaniously in the same place with a degree of occasional interaction. Min Tanaka/Derek BaileyMin Tanaka, dance.
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Incus Video VD03
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In the Japanese language improvisation is "Sokkyo", literally meaning "let rise here and now".Company Week is a candid and thorough endeavour to do this, through collective dynamism, being tested, bombarded and helped through the relationships between the self and the other, the individual and the group. Derek Bailey has been going through this attempt for close to 30 years as an organiser and a player. This is the very first fully-fledged Company Week in Japan in terms of the size of the group and time duration. He will play with nine players living in Japan with most of whom it is the first time he will meet. Serious, exciting, demanding, indeed. The members were picked out by Bailey,
who considered instrument combination and other ingredients
for the Company. Bailey says, "I am working on the
assumption that the performers do not know each other or,
at the very least, do not usually play together. In which
case my requirement is simple: a combination of goodwill,
practical ability, generosity, curiosity and an absence of
preconceptions" Motoharu Yoshizawa
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Incus Video VD04
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Derek Bailey's notes: 'The pub gig has been a staple of British musical lowlife for as long as anyone can remember. It figures pretty low on any list of preferred playing situations for me, but for John Stevens, I think it might have been his favourite playing context, one in which he could combine his commitment to music and to, let's say, conviviality. The drawbacks to a pub gig are too many and too obvious to need cataloguing, but for our kind of playing and on a good night they can sometimes be outweighed by certain advantages: the informality, the absence of the kind of bullshit usually associated with performed music, the attentiveness of the listeners. And these performances do seem to attract listeners, not 'audience'. The video was made by Paul Davies for a specific, now abandoned, project and I didn't become aware of its existence, in its entirety, until some time after John's death. The lighting is poor, there is the occasional unexplained lacuna and the cameraman doesn't always seem to have the best seat in the house, but, after all, this is a pub gig.' John Stevens/Derek BaileyJohn Stevens, drums, mini-trumpet.
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Incus Video VD05
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Milo Fine/Susan SperlMilo Fine - m-drums, piano, clarinet, electronics.
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