James Bailey

condition (record/cover): M / M (still sealed)

A private Canadian electronic pressing from October 1986, issued by James Bailey on his own Applied Science imprint and manufactured by Canadian Custom Records (CCR 9250). Three tracks recorded at Bailey's home in Toronto between June 1978 and April 1984, collected here as a single document of nearly a decade's quiet electroacoustic work.

Side A is given over to "The Train To The Eighth Dimension," a twenty-four minute piece for Minimoog and tape delay. The method is directly in the lineage of Terry Riley's Time-Lag Accumulator: two open-reel tape recorders placed side by side, the signal recorded on the first and played back from the second, the play-back signal returning to the first for re-recording. Bailey starts from white noise, modulates and filters it progressively toward a sine wave, then slowly decreases the rate of modulation. The resulting phase interactions between signal and beat unfold across the side with the kind of patient minimalism usually associated with the downtown New York studios, not a Toronto home recording.

Side B is two shorter pieces. "From A Window - 1 A.M." (recorded June 1978) pairs a field recording of crickets outside Bailey's bedroom window with a prepared electric guitar bowed with a spring. "4Hc" (July 1982) returns to the twin-deck tape-delay method with electric guitar as source. Self-described as an improviser working primarily with "implements" rather than instruments, Bailey had been recording since he acquired a Tandberg 3341X open-reel in 1973; Dimensions is the first-and for many years only-public document of that long apprenticeship. One of the more unexpectedly accomplished DIY electroacoustic LPs of its decade.