Derek Bailey Iskra 1903 Incus double LP

$

62

Derek Bailey / Paul Rutherford / Barry Guy: Incus 3/4 Iskra 1903.

I'm going to be selling off some of my 8,000 piece collection of jazz, classical and avant garde music over the next few months. Here's your opportunity to own a super clean vinyl copy of Derek Bailey's Iskra 1903 session released on his own Incus label. This is a later pressing - it says 1982 on the white labels. I have seen another copy of this with blue labels that I assume was the first run (The record was originally released in 1972). Nevertheless, this is a hard-to-find, rare and important recording from the godfathers of the British side of european free improvisation.

I don't think this copy has ever been played through (not by me certainly) - maybe once by someone else. I examined it under a strong light and saw no scratches. The vinyl has some minor discolorations but I think it probably left the pressing plant like that. I threw it on the turntable for 30 seconds and it sounded great - no noticeable surface noise. I'll grade the vinyl at a VG++.

The jacket is very clean - no writing or marks except for a sticker from 'North County Music Distributors' on the back (see photo). There is a minor bit of ringwear visible on the front and back (also see photo).

Reasonable starting price, no reserve.

SHIPPING: $2.95 Media Mail, or $4.95 Priority Mail, your choice. PAYMENT: cash, check, money order, PayPal. DUE: Within 10 days of end of auction. OVERSEAS BIDDERS: pay actual Air Mail shipping (will not ship Surface Mail), to be determined at end of auction. Uninsured packages are mailed at the buyer's risk.

References: Derek Bailey / Barry Guy / Paul Rutherford / Evan Parker / European Free Improvisation / Incus / Iskra / Brotzmann / Bennink / FMP

"It's hard to convey just how radical free improvisation seemed in the early 1970s. This music was genuinely shocking. When I first encountered albums such as Bailey/Bennink/Parker's THE TOPOGRAPHY OF THE LUNGS and Parker/Lytton's COLLECTIVE CALLS (URBAN) TWO MICROPHONES, I found them incomprehensible. An adventurous rock music diet of Soft Machine, Captain Beefheart, and the Mothers of Invention hadn't prepared me for anything like this. Nor had BITCHES BREW. Seeing Iskra 1903 in concert helped a bit; then I could at least relate certain sounds to certain instruments. But the musical rationale defeated me utterly. Compared to this stuff, Stockhausen seemed less like an iconoclast and more like Mozart. Mozart sounded like Liberace. Liberace sounded just like he looked - all spangles and pomade and toothy irrelevance. Music in general seemed tame, prissy. The members of Iskra 1903 weren't just musicians, they were revolutionaries (the group's name was that of a newspaper edited by Lenin), they were tampering with the sonic matter of the universe and at any moment it could explode in their faces." -BRIAN MARLEY - AVANT 2000