The Bays
Encyclopedia
The Bays are a group of English
musicians that only play live improvised
jazz and dance music
. They have never rehearsed nor recorded in a studio as they do not release music commercially. This means they are also completely independent of record labels. The only way to listen to The Bays is by seeing them perform live or by downloading free mp3
s of their performances from their website - their slogan is "Performance is the Product".
set to one that is predominantly drum and bass
, although typically a set will include several different genres melded into each other as a continuous piece of music, similar to a DJ set. House
, hip-hop
, trance
, ambient
, drum and bass
, reggae
, UK garage
, breakbeat
, funk
are all styles that are often mixed together in The Bays’ live improvisations.
They have headlined several popular festivals including The Big Chill
Festival and the dance tent at the Glastonbury Festival
and have played at other prominent events all over the world including the Sri Lankan WOMAD festival, the Hotaka Mountain Festival in Japan, and the Skol Beats festival in Brazil. They appeared again at the Glastonbury Festival in 2009 on The Glade stage with beatboxer Beardyman
providing samples for the set.
(drums), Chris Taylor
(bass), Ski Oakenfull (keyboards) (or Tom Szirtes (keyboards)) and Simon Richmond (effects and samples). Previous members of the band include Jamie Odell
, Simon Smugg, Tom Middleton
& Nick Cohen
.
Because every performance is completely improvised, The Bays welcome other artists to play with them on certain occasions. Past contributors include Herbie Hancock
, Richard Barbieri
, Matt White
, Mark Pritchard
, Bluey
, Stamina MC
, Ty and Hexstatic
.
The Bays have also done two British Council tours in which they travelled to Mexico (2003) and Germany (2004) to do music workshops with young musicians, resulting in performances with those that took part.
“It’s a creative idea we think of at the time, and it doesn’t get diluted by having any business sort of side. There’s nobody watering it down before people actually hear it.” – Chris Taylor
“If you do like 70 gigs of a set that you’re just doing every night, I would imagine that you were not actually giving value for money near the end. You’d just be sort of pissed off and know it back to front. But every gig, we’re basically shitting ourselves a lot of the time because we have no idea what’s gonna happen. Not only do I not know what they’re gonna do, I don’t know what I’m gonna do, and that applies for all of us, so it’s very edgy all the time. That tension comes across and that’s why people get into it.” – Simon Smugg
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
musicians that only play live improvised
Improvisation
Improvisation is the practice of acting, singing, talking and reacting, of making and creating, in the moment and in response to the stimulus of one's immediate environment and inner feelings. This can result in the invention of new thought patterns, new practices, new structures or symbols, and/or...
jazz and dance music
Dance music
Dance music is music composed specifically to facilitate or accompany dancing. It can be either a whole musical piece or part of a larger musical arrangement...
. They have never rehearsed nor recorded in a studio as they do not release music commercially. This means they are also completely independent of record labels. The only way to listen to The Bays is by seeing them perform live or by downloading free mp3
MP3
MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III, more commonly referred to as MP3, is a patented digital audio encoding format using a form of lossy data compression...
s of their performances from their website - their slogan is "Performance is the Product".
Performances
Despite a lack of marketing, The Bays gig constantly and have garnered a lot of praise and admiration with both audiences and promoters alike due to their impressive live shows. Because the whole set is improvised, the band will play off the mood of the audience and play the styles of music that they feel best fit the atmosphere. This means that performances can vary from a mostly ambientAmbient music
Ambient music is a musical genre that focuses largely on the timbral characteristics of sounds, often organized or performed to evoke an "atmospheric", "visual" or "unobtrusive" quality.- History :...
set to one that is predominantly drum and bass
Drum and bass
Drum and bass is a type of electronic music which emerged in the late 1980s. The genre is characterized by fast breakbeats , with heavy bass and sub-bass lines...
, although typically a set will include several different genres melded into each other as a continuous piece of music, similar to a DJ set. House
House music
House music is a genre of electronic dance music that originated in Chicago, Illinois, United States in the early 1980s. It was initially popularized in mid-1980s discothèques catering to the African-American, Latino American, and gay communities; first in Chicago circa 1984, then in other...
, hip-hop
Hip hop music
Hip hop music, also called hip-hop, rap music or hip-hop music, is a musical genre consisting of a stylized rhythmic music that commonly accompanies rapping, a rhythmic and rhyming speech that is chanted...
, trance
Trance music
Trance is a genre of electronic dance music that developed in the 1990s.:251 It is generally characterized by a tempo of between 125 and 150 bpm,:252 repeating melodic synthesizer phrases, and a musical form that builds up and breaks down throughout a track...
, ambient
Ambient music
Ambient music is a musical genre that focuses largely on the timbral characteristics of sounds, often organized or performed to evoke an "atmospheric", "visual" or "unobtrusive" quality.- History :...
, drum and bass
Drum and bass
Drum and bass is a type of electronic music which emerged in the late 1980s. The genre is characterized by fast breakbeats , with heavy bass and sub-bass lines...
, reggae
Reggae
Reggae is a music genre first developed in Jamaica in the late 1960s. While sometimes used in a broader sense to refer to most types of Jamaican music, the term reggae more properly denotes a particular music style that originated following on the development of ska and rocksteady.Reggae is based...
, UK garage
UK garage
UK garage is a genre of electronic dance music originating from the United Kingdom in the early-1990s. UK garage is a descendant of house music which originated in Chicago and New York, United States. UK garage usually features a distinctive syncopated 4/4 percussive rhythm with 'shuffling'...
, breakbeat
Breakbeat
In 1992, a new style called "jungalistic hardcore" emerged, and for many ravers it was too funky to dance to. Josh Lawford of Ravescene prophesied that the breakbeat was "the death-knell of rave" because the ever changing drumbeat patterns of breakbeat music didn't allow for the same zoned out,...
, funk
Funk
Funk is a music genre that originated in the mid-late 1960s when African American musicians blended soul music, jazz and R&B into a rhythmic, danceable new form of music. Funk de-emphasizes melody and harmony and brings a strong rhythmic groove of electric bass and drums to the foreground...
are all styles that are often mixed together in The Bays’ live improvisations.
They have headlined several popular festivals including The Big Chill
The Big Chill (music festival)
The Big Chill is an annual festival of alternative, dance and chill-out music and comedy, held in the grounds of Eastnor Castle during early August...
Festival and the dance tent at the Glastonbury Festival
Glastonbury Festival
The Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts, commonly abbreviated to Glastonbury or even Glasto, is a performing arts festival that takes place near Pilton, Somerset, England, best known for its contemporary music, but also for dance, comedy, theatre, circus, cabaret and other arts.The...
and have played at other prominent events all over the world including the Sri Lankan WOMAD festival, the Hotaka Mountain Festival in Japan, and the Skol Beats festival in Brazil. They appeared again at the Glastonbury Festival in 2009 on The Glade stage with beatboxer Beardyman
BeardyMan
Darren Foreman , better known as Beardyman, is a musician from London renowned for his beatboxing skills and use of live looping technology, and according to the BBC "King of Sound and Ruler of Beats".-Stage name and musical style:...
providing samples for the set.
Line up
The current members of the band are Andy GangadeenAndy Gangadeen
Andy Gangadeen is a drummer from the United Kingdom, known for his band The Bays and as a session drummer. Born in the UK to a Guyanese family, he grew up in Walthamstow and took up drums aged 17....
(drums), Chris Taylor
Chris Taylor
Chris Taylor may refer to:*Chris Taylor , owner of TMKO Lawyers & Last Gang Records*Chris Taylor , comedian, best known from The Chaser's War on Everything, CNNNN and Triple J...
(bass), Ski Oakenfull (keyboards) (or Tom Szirtes (keyboards)) and Simon Richmond (effects and samples). Previous members of the band include Jamie Odell
Jimpster
Jimpster is a British deep house producer, DJ, and founder of the record label Freerange Records. While producing his own tracks and playing live shows, Jimpster has also worked on numerous remixes, including a remix of the song 400 years by Bob Marley.-History:Hailing from a musical family,...
, Simon Smugg, Tom Middleton
Tom Middleton
Tom Middleton is a prolific British recording artist, music producer, remixer and DJ.A classically trained pianist and cellist, Middleton worked in the early 1990s with Richard D. James , co-producing "En-Trance To Exit" on the Analogue Bubblebath EP for Exeter's influential Mighty Force Records...
& Nick Cohen
Nick Cohen
Nick Cohen is a British journalist, author and political commentator. He is currently a columnist for The Observer, a blogger for The Spectator and TV critic for Standpoint magazine. He formerly wrote for the London Evening Standard and the New Statesman...
.
Because every performance is completely improvised, The Bays welcome other artists to play with them on certain occasions. Past contributors include Herbie Hancock
Herbie Hancock
Herbert Jeffrey "Herbie" Hancock is an American pianist, bandleader and composer. As part of Miles Davis's "second great quintet," Hancock helped to redefine the role of a jazz rhythm section and was one of the primary architects of the "post-bop" sound...
, Richard Barbieri
Richard Barbieri
Richard Barbieri, is an English synthesiser player, keyboardist and composer. He was educated at Catford Boys' School, Catford, South East London...
, Matt White
Matt White
Matthew White is an Australian former professional road racing cyclist and former directeur sportif for ....
, Mark Pritchard
Mark Pritchard
Mark Andrew Pritchard is a Conservative Party politician in England. He has been the Member of Parliament for The Wrekin in Shropshire since the 2005 general election.-Early and Porfessional life:...
, Bluey
Bluey
Bluey is an Australian television series made by Crawford Productions for the Seven Network in 1976.The series was another crime TV series from Crawford Productions, but was different from previous series - Homicide, Division 4, Matlock Police - in that it focused on a single detective rather than...
, Stamina MC
Stamina MC
Stamina MC is a stage name of drum & bass MC and vocalist Linden Reeves. Stamina MC used both rapping and vocalizing.-Biography:His earliest experiences of MCing were on pirate radio in 1996; first Pressure FM , then on to currently active, once-pirate-but-no-longer station Rinse FM...
, Ty and Hexstatic
Hexstatic
Hexstatic is a UK music duo, consisting of Stuart Warren Hill and Robin Brunson, that specializes in creating "quirky audio visual electro." Formed in 1997 after Hill and Brunson met while producing visuals at the Channel Five launch party, they decided to take over for the original members of the...
.
The Bays have also done two British Council tours in which they travelled to Mexico (2003) and Germany (2004) to do music workshops with young musicians, resulting in performances with those that took part.
Quotes
“It’s important for people to know that we are actually improvising even though they don’t a lot of the time. There are no sequencers running or tapes or any kind of thing that would tie us down. We just purely go off in any kind of direction that we want to. For people to know that, it should be quite exciting for them because they know that what we’re doing is totally off the cuff” – Jamie Odell“It’s a creative idea we think of at the time, and it doesn’t get diluted by having any business sort of side. There’s nobody watering it down before people actually hear it.” – Chris Taylor
Chris Taylor
Chris Taylor may refer to:*Chris Taylor , owner of TMKO Lawyers & Last Gang Records*Chris Taylor , comedian, best known from The Chaser's War on Everything, CNNNN and Triple J...
“If you do like 70 gigs of a set that you’re just doing every night, I would imagine that you were not actually giving value for money near the end. You’d just be sort of pissed off and know it back to front. But every gig, we’re basically shitting ourselves a lot of the time because we have no idea what’s gonna happen. Not only do I not know what they’re gonna do, I don’t know what I’m gonna do, and that applies for all of us, so it’s very edgy all the time. That tension comes across and that’s why people get into it.” – Simon Smugg
External links
- Official website
- 2002 Peel session (real player)
- 2002 Amsterdam & Big Chill festivals (real player)
- The Bays workshop with the British Council (mp3s & video)
- Discography of released live recordings
- http://www.bbc.co.uk/1xtra/dad/gallery/dancehallandbass/1.shtmlVideo of sessions with roots and d'n'b MCs (David Boomah, Yush, Levi RootsLevi RootsKeith Valentine Graham , better known as Levi Roots, is a British-Jamaican reggae musician, television personality, celebrity chef, businessman and multi-millionaire currently residing in Brixton, South London.-Music:...
, Levy Sill, Top CatTop CatTop Cat is a Hanna-Barbera prime time animated television series which ran from September 27, 1961 to April 18, 1962 for a run of 30 episodes on the ABC network. Reruns are played on Cartoon Network's classic animation network Boomerang.-History:...
& Earl 16)] - An interview with The Bays
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRvSCW4SFiQ&feature=relatedJohnny VegasJohnny VegasJohnny Vegas is an English actor and comedian. He is known for his angry rants, portly figure, high husky voice and support of St Helens rugby league club. More recently he has moved into dramatic acting.-Early life:He was born in St Helens, Lancashire, the youngest of four children of Laurence...
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