"John, Kent and I played only once as a trio, a convert in November 1992, and this is the recording of it. We Planned more work as a trio and John was in the process of setting up some others at the time of his death. So, as it turned out, it was just the one time." - Derek Bailey
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Derek Bailey / electric guitar
John Stevens / drums & mini trumpet
Kent Carter / bass
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Recorded November 1992, Leicester, England.
Available as 320k MP3 or 16bit FLAC
Tracklisting:
1. One Time - 11:56
2. U Kent & I - 14:15
3. Without Warning - 14:43
4. Along The Coast - 10:00
5. Not A Dry Glass In The House - 6:24
6. Cheers/Tears - 3:29
Derek Bailey was one of the most influential and adventurous experimental guitarists to come from England (Sheffield), evolving out of the trad-jazz scene of the fifties into the avant/jazz scene in '60s London. By the late sixties he was a member of the Joseph Holbrooke Trio, Spontaneous Music Ensemble and Music Improvisation Company which later became the amorphous Company under his leadership. These groups were at the birth and center of the British free-jazz scene. In the early seventies, Derek Bailey and Evan Parker started their own record label called Incus Records - one of the first artist-run labels.
Although Derek played with members of the British free/jazz scene, he also forged relationships with a number of European players like Han Bennink & Peter Brötzmann, Japanese free players like Abe Kaoru, Toshinori Kondo, as well as American improvisers like Anthony Braxton, George Lewis and John Zorn to name a few.
Derek organized an annual festival called Company Week in the 80's & 90's, which brought together a unique group of international improvisers from varied backgrounds.
"He was a man who repelled pretension, refused to be shoehorned into comfortable categories, and played amazing guitar." - John Butcher
"I do not subscribe to the idea that free improvisation began or ends with any individual. This only suggests that somehow the music Derek made was so individualistic that it failed to communicate anything beyond personal expression." - Eddie Prevost
John William Stevens (1940 - 1994) was an English drummer and a founding member of the Spontaneous Music Ensemble. Stevens played alongside a large number of prominent free improvisors in the SME, including Derek Bailey, Peter Kowald, Julie Tippetts and Robert Calvert, but from the mid-1970s, the make-up of the SME began to settle down to a regular group of Stevens, Nigel Coombes on violin, and Roger Smith on guitar. From 1983 Stevens was involved with Community Music, an organisation through which he took his form of music making to youth clubs, mental health institutions and other unusual places. Notes taken during these sessions were later turned into a book for the Open University called Search and Reflect (1985). SME played for its last time in 1994, when it included John Butcher. Stevens died later that year. Emanem boss Martin Davidson has written an appreciation of Stevens, which you can read here.
Kent Carter's father was a viola player and conductor and his son studied piano, cello and bassoon as a child, starting with the bass in 1959. He studied music in Boston, Mass. from 1960 to 1964, participating in the "October Revolution" Jazz Composers Guild Orchestra under the direction of Michael Mantler and Carla Bley. Kent Carter toured and recorded in Europe with Paul Bley, Carla Bley, Michael Mantler, Steve Lacy, Don Cherry, Gato Barbieri, Alan Silva, Mal Waldron, Michael Smith, Bobby Bradford, Max Roach, Enrico Rava, Roswell Rudd, Derek Bailey, John Stevens, Trevor Watts, Steve McCall and many others.
