Noble's duo with Bailey, 'Out of the Past' documents the two in duel modes - that sensitive drumming we've come to know so well with Noble with the more percussive aspects of Bailey's playing style, alongside thick, distorted guitar and fuzzed out drums on the aptly named, 'Time Regained'.
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Steve Noble / drums, cymbals
Derek Bailey / electric guitar
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Tracklisting:
1. The Long Wait - 3:30
2. Four For 4 - 2:46
3. Breakaway - 4:15
4. Raw - 5:07
5. Unfiltered - 3:30
6. Motion - 5:41
7. Out Of Sight - 2:28
8. Bright Moments - 4:34
9. Pick Up - 4:21
10. Decoy - 1:46
11. Time Regained - 2:37
12. 7 Shades - 7:13
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Recorded by Tony Robinson at Moat Studios, London, February 1999. Produced by Steve Noble. Post production by Mick Ritchie & Steve Noble. Thanks to Karen Brookman Bailey & Tony Robinson. Design by Noble & Denning. Original photo by Amalia Pistilli.
Available as 16bit FLAC or 320kbp MP3
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
Steve Noble is London's leading drummer, a fearless and constantly inventive improviser whose super-precise, ultra-propulsive and hyper-detailed playing has galvanized encounters with Derek Bailey, Matthew Shipp, Ishmael Wadada Leo Smith, Stephen O'Malley, Joe McPhee, Alex Ward, Rhodri Davies and many, many more.
In the early eighties, Noble played with the Nigerian master drummer Elkan Ogunde, Rip Rig and Panic, Brion Gysin and the Bow Gamelan Ensemble, before going on to work with the pianist Alex Maguire and with Derek Bailey (including Company Weeks 1987, 89 and 90). He was featured in the Bailey's excellent TV series on Improvisation for Channel 4 based on his book ‘Improvisation; its nature and practise’. He has toured and performed throughout Europe, Africa and America and currently leads the groups N.E.W (with John Edwards and Alex Ward) and DECOY (with John Edwards and Alexander Hawkins).
