Playing

by Thom JurekThis lovely duet between avant guitar kingpin Derek Bailey and drummer/trumpet player John Stevens is a fine example of what Bailey was up to in the early '90s, before he discovered drum'n'bass and Bill Laswell, among other things. While the date is, as usual, completely improvised, relying more on nuance, texture, and timing than tonality, subtle timbral studies are evident, particularly in the middle of the recording on "Ping Pong" (where Bailey forgoes the electric guitar entirely and concentrates instead on the refracted timbres of an acoustic, and Stevens mutes his trumpet and plays percussion with his other hand in the exact center of spaces Bailey vacates. Also, "360," which starts out on electric, screaming and plunking so that the dials record in the red, shifts mid-track to an acoustic as the center of Stevens' percussion moves entirely away from drums to small instruments and then back to the auditory overload of the electric. Unlike a lot of Bailey's recordings before and after, Playing is also recorded very well in a space that allows every vibration to be heard plainly, creating for the listener an awesome dynamic expanse. Droll, funny, and good-natured, Playing is just what the doc ordered for the "need some improv" blues. This may be just your run-of-the-mill Derek Bailey album, it's true, but think about what that says. How many of the current crop of young whips would give their fingers to record one album as fine as "a typical Derek Bailey record."