Free-improvisation guitar pioneer Derek Bailey's current career phase - that of elder statesman eagerly courted by and collaborating with a seemingly endless stream of young players (as well as some unlikely veterans from other musical worlds including Pat Matheny and Tony Williams) - has produced a glut of releases in the last couple of years that could seem almost daunting to newcomers curious to dive into the guitarist's angular, highly abstract music (remember Anthony Braxton's still-accurate '70s description: "the most amazing guitar player on the planet"). One good rule of thumb - if you ask this veteran listener - is to start with Bailey's solo guitar albums and group CDs featuring fellow musicians from free playing's "first generation" - men like Steve Lacy, Braxton, Han Bennink, Evan Parker (this would include the majority of releases on Bailey's own Incus Records label or the excellent Emanem - yes, the label). And yet --- what a piece of luck to have heard this excellent limited-edition EP, LIVE AT LAMAR'S (Shaking Ray Records), 27 minutes' worth of a 1999 restaurant gig in Chattanooga, Tennessee featuring DB with latter-day Southern collaborators Dennis Palmer (synthesizers) and Bob Stagner (drums) - sometimes known as the Shaking Ray Levis, one knows not why. "Fine Food - We Deliver" on the grainy cover photograph is indeed borne out, particularly at half point through the superior second set ("Catfish Night"), when a standard-issue free-improv noise climax (splang splang, thrumble rumble, wheeeooosshh) subsides and slowly lurks into several rich minutes of almost cinematically dramatic, dark atmospheres of noise: into the relative quiet of random synthesizer comets comes Bailey (on amplified big-band acoustic), chopping away at scumbly single-note runs, letting float long feedback hums while Stagner percusses with scattered, quiet but portentious all-over spangles and attacks - then the three heat up as Palmer's whirlwinds and ominous cyclones spirit around the room, cut by Bailey's dry but tasty cigar-box banjo runs; it's an atonal sound fest that makes perfect sense as music - noise that rocks, literally.

--- ANTHONY MOSTROM of L.A. WEEKLY
Los Angeles
Sept 22, 2003