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Sunday, June 9, 2024

John Butcher - Sunday Interview

Sunday, June 09, 2024    No comments

Photo by Cristina Marx/Photomusix


  1. What is your greatest joy in improvised music?

    You mean apart from the money and garlands …..? I’d say it’s when you have that feeling of creating, perhaps simply uncovering, something that wasn’t really possible to imagine, or plan, beforehand. Beyond the basic nuts and bolts of how things work, I mean. It could be conceptual, or emotional, or relational or technical - all of which are obviously interdependent. The feeling is not as straightforward as joy. It often seems that I’m moving towards something that’s always going to remain slightly out of reach

  2. What quality do you most admire in the musicians you perform with?

    That they’re working with music that comes from themselves, that’s not generic. And that it’s not hermetic or fixed, so they can really shape their playing in collaboration.

  3. Which historical musician/composer do you admire the most?

    An impossible question. There are so many and it changes over the years. I wouldn’t like to try to rank them.

  4. If you could resurrect a musician to perform with, who would it be?

    Seems a touch macabre … and music’s so tied into time, place and culture. Maybe I could go back, as a different person, and play a little drums behind Lester Young.

    I would enjoy the chance to talk to John Stevens and Derek Bailey again. In the light of what I’ve learnt since the time I played with them.

  5. What would you still like to achieve musically in your life?

    Playing music is, for me, a continuing process and not primarily goal oriented. Mind you, “When I Paint my Masterpiece” I hope I can recognise it ……
    I guess we all want to keep making music that connects to our history but still feels fresh and relevant. Staying enthusiastic about experimenting and working in new situations is important. I’ll see what comes from that.

  6. Are you interested in popular music and - if yes - what music/artist do you particularly like?

    Yes - isn’t that where most of us start from? My likes are scattered pretty incoherently around the place but with the 21st Century noticeably underrepresented. Recently I’ve listened to Jeff Buckley, Ray Charles, Roza Eskenazi, Karen Dalton, Spiritualized, Bob Dylan, Low and Sly Stone.

  7. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?

    Date of Birth.

  8. Which of your albums are you most proud of?

    Records are just a small part of the musical work. I can’t really judge them like this. Some of the distant releases - my first solo “13 Friendly Numbers”, the “News from the Shed” group, “A New Distance” with the Spontaneous Music Ensemble for instance - take me back to a vanished world. I like the new ones “Fluid Fixations” - a piece for large group, and “The Very Fabric” - the latest of my responses to unusual acoustics. But there are some pretty good ones in between too.

  9. Once an album of yours is released, do you still listen to it? And how often?

    Not usually for some time - but when I hear old tracks (especially unexpectedly) it’s intriguing how I usually hear it quite differently than I did at the time. One has no choice but complete immersion in the work when you’re making it. Then time lets you step back and you can feel a bit like a listener to someone else’s music. You care less about the how, and more about the what and the why.

  10. Which album (from any musician) have you listened to the most in your life?

    Probably the Beatle’s “White Album” - but I got it for Christmas in 1968, so I wouldn’t draw too many conclusions from that.

  11. What are you listening to at the moment?

    The last three records I’ve sat down with and listened to all the way through are Tony Oxley’s “February Papers”, “Cat Power sings Dylan: The Royal Albert Hall 1966 Concert” and John Tilbury playing John Cage’s “Sonatas & Interludes for Prepared Piano”.

  12. What artist outside music inspires you?

    Like most of these questions, this one would have been easier to try to answer 40 years ago.

    Remember the list of inspirers (sounds unfortunately like influencers …) on “Freak Out”? So much enthuses you when you first encounter it. Over time it gets more amorphous. Maybe the inspirations have had time to sink in deeper, and you don’t quite recognise them anymore.

    I find I’m interested in looking at an artist’s work over a long period - how they change and how they stay the same. Recently I’ve been thinking about this with regards to Yasujiro Ozu, Philip Guston and Yoko Ono, for instance.

John Butcher on the Free Jazz Blog:

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Saturday, May 14, 2022

John Butcher - 5 LPs from Berlin (and Leipzig) on NI VU NI CONNU

Saturday, May 14, 2022    2 comments

John Butcher at Ausland, November 2019. (c) Cristina Marx

By Paul Acquaro

British saxophonist John Butcher is no stranger to Berlin. Linked to the Echtzeit scene that emerged during the heady days of post re-unification Germany in the abundant derelict spaces that served as breeding grounds for creativity, Butcher, on the occasion of this 65th birthday, held a short residency in November 2019 at one of the original and still existent Echtzeit venues, the experimental music hub Ausland, located in the now tamed and expensive Prenzlauer Berg. Presented as a set of 5 LPs, the music captures both new and old music acquaintances, the music and information within showcases Butcher's continuing ability to push listeners and musicians alike in new directions. On the albums, he collaborates in combinations with Sophie Agnel, Gino Robair, Thomas Lehn, Marta Zapparoli, Liz Allbee, Ignaz Schick, Magda Mayas, Tony Buck, Werner Dafeldecker and Burkhard Beins. The LPs in the the collection contain liner notes from Stuart Broomer, photos by Cristina Marx, and gatefold sleeves design by Yaqin Si.

Sophie Agnel & John Butcher - la pierre tachée


Stuart Broomer's generous and excellent liner notes are essential in placing the music on these albums into meaningful historical context, and the quote that he chooses to begin with is key to framing the whole event. According to Butcher:
"Ausland was unique in my own experience. I was working with four different groups in two nights and had chosen the musicians to form specific units with unique identities and possibilities. I didn’t want it to be a Company-type event (which, by the way, I also love) where the grouping is more ad-hoc and the accumulative results more evolutionary. I was interested in the potential distinctiveness of each set, given that I was the constant factor, but without major aesthetic leaps and without me having to pretend to be a chameleon.”
So the set of changing constellations begins with Butcher and French pianist Sophie Agnel.  It begins with Agnel approaching the piano in a percussive manner, a scraping and striking of the piano's strings, while Butcher plays legato tones, before he interrupts with a splutter of sounds. The track, 'chemin creux' then evolves into series of woodwind multiphonics over austere, prepared tones from the piano. The music builds at a measured pace: a quickening of textured tones from Agnel, a thickening of tonal textures from Butcher. The sounds connect, they resist as much as they exist co-exist in the shared musical space, introducing tension and drama as the music continues. It sounds like a dance, a fight, resolution, and finally agreement. A highlight of the set is in the opening minutes of 'shrieks in cups of gold,' in which both Agnel and Butcher reach a fevered pitch and then wander for a tense span of time exploring small sounds, before launching into a second intense passage. The ending track 'sillonner' wraps up the recording on a high note with a rich summary of the intensity and space throughout the album.


John Butcher / Thomas Lehn / Gino Robair - shaped & chased


The next recording seems to following Butcher's stated plans "to form specific units with unique identities". The sounds from saxophone undoubtable belongs to Butcher - the tones waver, flutter with the air, chirp with confidence, and at times explode into strong melodic statements. However, the setting has greatly changed with the work of Butcher's long time associates analog synthesizer player Thomas Lehn and percussionist Gino Robair.

The opening track, 'dorrying,' finds the trio quickly diving deep into a collective soundscape. Butcher sets the energy bar high in the opening minutes, which the other two respond to in kind, leading to an avalanche of sounds that quickly collapse into a long, tension filled exchange. The next track, 'tempren,' takes a different approach, with episodic build-ups of electronic tones, buzzing saxophone, and cascading percussion.  On the last track, Lehn's analog synthesizer (or is it Robair's Blippo box? - a fascinating custom machine that Broomer tantalizingly describes as being constructed based on chaos theory) shadows Butcher. When the plops of liquid sound appear, the synthesizer is much more likely the culprit. As the three come together, the atmosphere becomes spacey and rich with possibility. The track 'halouen' is almost straight-ahead jazz, sort of. Butcher plays rather melodic-free and aggressively spars with Lehn's otherworldly sounds. Finally, 'swough' fills with a fluid momentum, carried by mallet heavy percussion and unrelenting drips and splatters of electronic tonic.



Liz Allbee / John Butcher / Ignaz Schick / Marta Zapparoli - lamenti dall’infinito


Here is a true Echtzeit collaboration: trumpeter Liz Allbee, electronics/turntablist Ignaz Schick, and tapes and electronics artist Marta Zapparoli, all long time contributors to the Berlin scene. They are also the largest of the groups in this set, a quartet, or a double duo of acoustic horns and assorted electronic. The opening track 'Sea of Distortions' begins slowly, a drone of sorts, as the group begins filling the room with a stream of sound. At first, one may be wondering where Butcher is, between the whoosh and chatter of electronics and Allbee's unusual tones, but then you hear him, rapid blips leading to overblown legato notes. The momentum of the track builds, carried by Bucher at times, and the static nervousness of the electronics at other times. The opening track is a full album side, but by the half-way mark, you will likely be drawn into the unseeming sound world, losing track of time and place. Side B is split into a short 'Dialogues in a Shell', a piece just shy of four minutes, starting with a bricolage of samples that eventual yield to narrow drone. 'Molecular Memories,' at 17 minutes, begins with what may suggest a dentist's drill sounding out over a thumb piano. Electronics? Acoustic horns? They're in there, mixing together into unexpected combinations. Possibly the most in-accessible of the albums, but like most challenging things, it may be the one whose affects grow the most, the more you listen.

Vellum: Magda Mayas / John Butcher / Tony Buck - glints


Maybe this is the entry point for anyone still uninitiated in the sonic complexities of John Butcher's music. Not to suggest that the music on glints is in anyway easier to digest than on the other ones in this set, but there is something graspable in interactions of the three acoustic instruments in this long standing trio. Pianist Madga Mayas and percussionist Tony Buck, long time Berlin residents and  Butcher collaborators, surround the saxophonist with prepared piano and striking percussive textures, providing both a comfortable and stimulating environment.

Side A opens with a bang on the gong and high-end-of-perception squeaks from Butcher. There is a following clatter of percussion (maybe one of the those nets with shells attached?) and individually plucked notes from inside the piano. The flutters, the clacking, the plucking collectively lead the listener into a dense forest of sound, beautiful and strange, with possible danger lurking behind every turn. Going further, more formal sounds manifest like the truncated tinkle of prepared piano, brief smears of notes from the saxophone, and a roll from the drums. In Vellum's soundworld, it is hard not to be enrapt with the intricate and unexpected beauty in all the overlapping musical foliage. The group reaches an apex of intensity about 12 minutes into the slowly layering piece, which then mutates through a quiet percussion-led chrysalis to a cascade of notes from Mayas and Butchers, playing contours rather than scales, while Buck delivers some incisive drumming. Side B begins with the prepared piano attack that closes out Side A. The group then takes a spiritual detour, Butcher engaging in Evan Parker like circular breathing over an intense pulse from Buck. All this in 3 quick minutes, then it is over, as the group goes deeply introspective, slowly building back to a frenetic passage dominated by single note runs from the piano. The groups continues through this world, long winding passages through the forest leading to dramatic features and finally a serene clearing.

Burkhard Beins / John Butcher / Werner Dafeldecker - induction


This final set takes us out of Ausland. Side A was recorded at the experimental music room KM28 across the famous divide and into the former western neighborhood of Kreuzberg, and Side B was recorded a bit farther away at the KulTurnhalle in the city of Leipzig. The trio, percussionist Burkhard Beins, bassist Werner Dafeldecker and Butcher have worked together before for a while, most notably in the group Polwechsel. On 'induction' the music toggles between minimal to maximal, with all sorts of interactions between. Towards the end of the first track, 'circulation,' there is a tremendous amount of percussion and rumbling bass, while Bucher fires on all cylinders, playing notes far beyond the typical range of the saxophone. Prior to these final moments of the track, there is a long accumulation of intrumental ideas and approaches. Side 2 begins with 'Connection', starting with sounds drawn from the drums, then the sax, and finally the bass in succession. They then build to a ringing drone interrupted by eruptive sounds from Butcher and Dafeldecker. The music is tense, even somewhat aggressive. The following up 'conversion' is a short interlude that opens up the space a bit, leading to 'confluence', which is a denser piece that in a sense straddles the darkness of the first one with the chain interactions of the second. The piece is an impressionistic sound collage, with many colorful tones mixing into unexpected combinations.


Taken as a whole, these five albums represent a new artistic high-point for the ever productive and creative Butcher. All of the recordings offer something different, though to reference the earlier quote, Butcher's playing is consistent, and consistently excellent. While it is true that he is no 'chameleon', it is also noteworthy that he also is not a one-trick pony. The variety of the musical collaborations and the variability in each performance - each piece - is rich. The live experience, in the small subterranean Ausland, must have contributed significantly to the experience, but on its own, the music itself is evocative and demands close listening. Luckily, we can do just that.

All albums are available on the NI VU NI CONNU Bandcamp site, in both digital and LP format.

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Friday, October 25, 2024

John Butcher @ 70: Berlin Weekend

Friday, October 25, 2024    1 comment

All photos (c) Cristina Marx/Photomusix

By Paul Acquaro (text) and Cristina Marx (photos)

In advance of his 70th birthday (October 25, 1954), British saxophonist John Butcher performed for three consecutive nights at the recently renovated experimental music space KM28 in Berlin's lively Neukölln district. The musical program featured six different configurations, with Butcher being the main connecting element, although his long history with the city certainly played a role as well.

Each night of the residency followed an intentional pattern. As Butcher explained, "I wanted each night to start with a duo. It's the most intimate situation for both the players and listeners and I like the clarity of intention one usually hears. Then the trios and quartet, which generate very different dynamics of interaction."

The series kicked off with Butcher and pianist Magda Mayas, who also was co-organizer of the event, who along with photographer Cristina Marx (whose photos are featured here) made the birthday concert residency a reality. Butcher and Mayas' performance, which, although they have played together in different combinations over many years, was their first as a duo. The set was captivating, built on fluttering and fleeting harmonics and overtones of Mayas' prepared piano and Butcher's unique musical language. 

All of the sets were unique, building on old and new collaborators, all drawing out different sides of Butcher's playing. Butcher further elaborated, "it was primarily based around my relationships with Berlin based musicians - some going back 25 years (Axel & Werner) - but adding Angharad (who herself has strong Berlin connections) and Xavier (so we could present The Contest of Pleasures - the one "regular" group). It principally involved musicians I had a history with, although it was the first time I'd played with Andrea and only the second with Emilio.

"The duo with Magda, the trio with Emilio & Liz, and the quartet were all first time combinations, " he continued, and "the duos with Angharad and Tony have been very occasional, perhaps 2 or 3 times."

The end result of all the arrangements was a musically rich event, with Butcher seemingly drawing on ever refreshing sources of inspiration and a very happy birthday party for all involved.

Thursday, Sept 12:


MAYAS & BUTCHER
Magda Mayas (piano) & John Butcher (saxophone)


 


THE CONTEST OF PLEASURES
Axel Dörner (trumpet), Xavier Charles (clarinet) & John Butcher (saxophone)

The Mayas and Butcher set was followed by a reconvening of a long standing "Contest of Pleasures" with trumpeter Axel Dorner and french clarinetist Xavier Charles. The trio's music was telepathic and episodic, one musician introducing an idea and the others quickly reacting to it, sometimes in harmony and other times with harsh dissonance. Extended techniques were plentiful, with the group employing many out of the ordinary approaches to playing their respective instruments.

Friday, Sept 13

BUCK & BUTCHER
Tony Buck (drums) & John Butcher (saxophone)
 
Opposite of the tonal experiments of the first night, the duo opened the night in a more rhythmically syncopated and melodically straight-forward way. Buck used each limb to play a different instrument (chimes, shaker, bells and bass drum) in interweaving times. Butcher followed his melodic muse, first on tenor sax and then on soprano, his freely improvised lines flowing around the polyrythmic percussion. Traces of his highly personal approach to the saxophone - fluttering, chirps, and resonant tones - adorned the music as the two barrelled through a short but complete set.
 



ALLBEE, GORDOA & BUTCHER
Liz Allbee (trumpet), Emilio Gordoa (vibraphone, percussion) & John Butcher (saxophone)

The trio began agitatedly, Gordoa furiously bowing a cymbal, Albee deepening her sound with a mute, and Butcher leaning into signiature multiphonics. Experimental playing, from a bowed beer can to blowing through the trumpet's spit-release valve, abounded as the trio tacitly followed and pulled the musical strands that connected them.

Saturday, Sept 14

 

DAVIES & BUTCHER
Angharad Davies (violin) & John Butcher (saxophone)  

The first set of the last evening began with saliva gurgling in the mouthpiece of the sax as an atonal melody slowly emerged from the violin. Then, the centrifugal forces formed from the circular intensity of Davies playing, which seemed to amplify Butcher's humming and vibrating melodies. Roles then reversed, but the musical tensions stayed strong until the end of this gripping set.


BUTCHER–NEUMANN–DAFELDECKER–BEINS
John Butcher (saxophone)
Andrea Neumann (piano, electronics)
Werner Dafeldecker (double bass, electronics)
Burkhard Beins (percussion)

The final set was with Polwechsel members Werner Dafeldecker and Burkhard Beins, along with Andrea Neumann. The quartet, a deep representation of the Echtzeit musik scene of Berlin (Neuman, Beins and Dafeldecker were all early participants) covered the sonic possibilities from extreme quiet to extended techniques (i.e. steel wool on drums) to train like chugging taking the group to energetic peaks.


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Saturday, January 26, 2019

Latest Releases from John Butcher

Saturday, January 26, 2019    2 comments

By Eyal Hareuveni

Readers of this blog need no introduction to British innovative sax player John Butcher. His four new releases offer engaging and intriguing sonic journeys with an enigmatic site specific, new and old collaborators, adventurous solo pieces and an orchestral work with Butcher as an improvising soloist.

Joe McPhee / John Butcher - At The Hill Of James Magee (Trost, 2019) *****


The first ever meeting of master sax players - American Joe McPhee and British John Butcher happened in April 17, 2010 in the middle of nowhere. McPhee and butcher played at The Hill, located 70 miles east of El Paso, Texas, deep in the the Chihuahuan desert, where enigmatic artist James Magee - a painter, sculptor, poet, film and video maker, has been building, over the last three decades, four identical buildings connected by causeways, crafted of irregularly-cut shale rock, spreading over 2,000 acres of desert land. Magee's work on The Hill is supposed to conclude around 2030. Only a handful of people have visited The Hill and photographing it is strictly forbidden.

McPhee and Butcher played at The Hill on a dry and windy afternoon, before about 70 people who did the tasking pilgrimage to the unique site. Their set transforms the intensity of The Hill into a profound, ceremonial-spiritual experience. Any performance in this forces the musicians to play, actually collaborate, with the voices of the desolated landscape, the architecture and rare acoustics of The Hill, as well as in relation to its emotional weight and the unfathomable dedication of Magee to this place.

The set began with the 20-minutes “Sometimes Yes, Sometimes”. McPhee plays the alto sax inside the North building and Butcher plays the tenor sax inside the South Building, each of these buildings is five meter high and full of sculptors and installations by Magee. The whole set was captured by two microphones, located outside the buildings and recording into battery-powered equipment, as The Hill is far from the local electric grid. At one point, McPhee and Butcher exit the buildings, continue playing as they walk to the opposite structure, passing each other at the center of the cruciform walkway. McPhee and Butcher alternated solo on the next shorter, five pieces, played on the walkway, elevated three meters above the ground.

McPhee and Butcher opt for a reserved and sparse tone, as The Hill natural reverberations proved to be a powerful, open-air echo chamber to reckon with. Often both sound reverential and contemplative, stressing brief silences, but on few occasions they burst with emotional, fiery cries. Both McPhee and Butcher responded subtly to each solo pieces but avoided explicit comments. Their short solo pieces emphasized McPhee’s hypnotic, emotional urgency and Butcher’s innovative. percussion ideas. They conclude this magnificent set with the serene and playful duet, “St. Ida's Breath (Less Her Neck And Teeth)”.




Eddie Prévost /John Butcher - Visionary Fantasies (Matchless Recordings, 2018) ****½



AMM’s percussionist Eddie Prévost and Butcher shared the stage for the first time at Derek Bailey's 1990 London Company Week. They didn't perform together again until March 2005, when they recorded their first duo album, (Interworks, Matchless, 2005). Since then they kept performing together in different formats, recorded collaborations of Butcher with AMM (Trinity and Sounding Music, with an expanded AMM featuring pianist Christian Wolff and cellist Ute Kanngiesser, Matchless, 2008 and 2010) and later Butcher took part in in Prévost’s series of Meetings with Remarkable Saxophonists (Volume 2, with double bass player Guillaume Viltard, Matchless, 2012).

Visionary Fantasies was recorded in April 2018 at Iklectik, London. The cover frames this duo recording with a fitting aphorism by William Blake’ from “The Argument” (1788): “As the true method of knowledge is experiment, the true faculty of knowing must be the faculty which experiences. This faculty I treat of”.

Butcher begins with two solo pieces, the contemplative “Twice and More” that investigates the resonant qualities of the tenor sax and as an abstract wind machine, and “Tree Demons”, where Butcher orchestrates bird calls into a playful, urgent choir. Prévost’s 19-minutes solo “Obsessional Enquiries” begins as a deep meditation on the microtonal and almost infinite resonant characteristics of cymbals and gongs. Later it morphs into powerful waves of intense, metallic sounds, each one explores more and more nuances of these sounds, and then it concludes with a quiet, graceful coda.

Prévost and Butcher three-parts “Visionary Fantasies” suite encompasses many facets of the inventive and imaginative language of these master improvisers. They play and experiment with abstract, constant-shifting dynamics as means to share ideas and doubts, feed each other’s with an invigorating energy, release the torturing tension, suggest a vivid, cinematic drama and offer compassion and tender yet sober comfort. And all performed with rich, beautiful colors and engaging elegance.





John Butcher - Made to Measure (Self Produced, 2018) ****


Made to Measure is collection of six distinct compositions from Butcher, commissioned or written for specific situations, events and compilations, dating from 1998 until 2017, and available only on Butcher’s Bandcamp page .

The opening, playful “and sometimes a mistake is the best move you can make”, for multi-tracked tenor and soprano saxophones, offers a clever architecture of sax choir. It was written as a response to a passage in Daniel Defoe's 1772 novel "A Journal of the Plague Year" , contributed to Argentinian author and scholar Reinaldo Laddaga's project things a mutant needs to know (Unsounds, 2013).

“Asymptotic Freedom”, titled after a term from particle physics, for one player who uses saxophone controlled feedback, acoustic guitar, e-bow, snare drum and piano wire, responds to the “self destructive art" theories of artist and political activist Gustav Metzger, and commissioned by harpist Rhodri Davies. This abstract piece suggests an enigmatic rhythmic game made of the saxophone imaginative, feedback noises.

The brilliant, cinematic “Between the Skies”, for saxophone and sound files, appeared in a different version on Tarab Cuts (Out of the Machine, 2014). This piece flirts with pre-WWII Arabic music, and often abstracts the calls the muezzins recitations. It was commissioned for Visiting Tarab, conceived by Lebanese composer Tarek Atoui as a modern day response to the classical Arabic music in the private collection of Kamal Kassar in Beirut. Butcher edited and re-composed sound files from these old 78’s vinyls.

The mysterious “Penny Wands & Native String”, for 8 futurist noise machines - Intonarumori - and saxophone, corresponds with Italian painter Luigi Russolo innovative ideas about sounds and noise, as captured in his manifesto “The Art of Noise” (1913). This piece was performed with a fragment from Russolo’s film “Risveglio di una città” (Awakening of a City, 1913). The Intonarumori were reconstructed by Russolo expert Luciano Chessa.

The short and, again, brilliant “Monk Hum”, composed specially for the cassette-only label Tapeworm's centennial edition compilation, A Can of Worms (2017), is a game of touches of the saxophone keys with microphone hums that refers wisely with Thelonious Monk’s dissonant and angular lines.

The last “Three Scenes for Five Tenors” is an improvisation from 1998, released before on a compilation disc with RESONANCE magazine. This piece offers another arresting architecture of saxophones choir, but more provocative one than the opening piece..






Christopher Fox - Topophony (hat[now]ART, 2018) ****½

Butcher performs here on one (of three versions) of the orchestral work of British composer Christopher Fox, Topophony for orchestra - with or without Improvising soloists, commissioned by Israeli conductor and Tectonics festivals founder and curator Ilan Volkov. This work implies that improvisation can operate at the heart of the compositional process.

This composition was premièred with Volkov conducting the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra with soloist Rhodri Davies, and later performed with the Athens State Orchestra with guitarist Fred Frith as soloist and in a chamber version with the Israel Contemporary Players with soloists clarinetist Yoni Silver and percussionist Ram Gabay. Here Volkov conducts the WDR Symphony Orchestra in a studio version of Topophony. The first version features soloists German trumpeter Axel Dörner and drummer Paul Lovens, the second version features the WDR Symphony Orchestra alone features soloists German analog synthesizer player Thomas Lehn and Butcher.

Topophony is a serene and poetic soundscape, comprised of a series of thirty-nine interconnected soft harmonies, layered in the formation of a natural landscape of drifting sand dunes in the desert or slow moving clouds in the skies. The orchestra music is fully notated but the soloists have no instructions except that they should start playing after the orchestra’s music has begun and finish before it ends. The score also stipulates that the improvisers should listen to not more than one orchestral rehearsal and that they should not rehearse with their orchestral colleagues. The improvisers should be situated within the orchestra, but separated from each other. The conductor acts as a mediator between the orchestra and the soloists and has some degree of freedom, or at least choice: the score instructs him to vary his beat continuously and so he has the freedom to shape the length of each chord.

Dörner and Lovens blend into the orchestra dynamics and within the meditative, pastoral orchestral sound, but often add subtle commentaries. Lehn and Butcher act alone most of the time, but both stress sonic contrasts, sometimes even sonic collisions. They charge the hypnotic dynamics and spontaneous bursts of urgent sax calls and overtones or alien, electric tones into the overall, acoustic, orchestral envelope, but both never disrupt the peaceful flow of this impressive work.


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Thursday, February 1, 2018

John Butcher: Restless Imagination, Tireless Innovation

Thursday, February 01, 2018    1 comment

By Eyal Hareuveni

Three recent albums of British great sax player John Butcher that stress the breadth, resourcefulness and imaginative scope of his sonic vocabulary and improvisational strategies.

Haino Keiji / John Butcher - Light Never Bright Enough (OTORoku, 2017) *****

Butcher has played only twice before with Japanese guitarist-vocalist-multi-instrumentalist Keiji Haino, both times in 2016. In July of that year, the first time was at the Empty Gallery in Hong Kong and the second time at Cafe Oto in London, the second which was captured in this recording. Haino and Butcher met five years ago when Butcher opened for Haino’s group Fushitsusha at Cafe OTO. Both are innovative improvisers have much in common, expanding the vocabularies and the sonic scopes of their respective instruments beyond any conventions of genre or style, and in a completely personal and uncompromising manners.

Each of the five explorations on Light Never Bright Enough creates a distinct atmosphere. The first one searches for common ground through brief, thorny guitar lines and clear, short sax blows. On the second piece, they sketch out a poetic texture that alternates between Butcher’s warm, melodic lines and Haino’s precise-percussive punctuation of these lines. This collaboration eventually leads Butcher to experiment with feedback noises and humming overtones that match the disruptive guitar. The third 18-minute piece is the most complex and tense one. Both Butcher and Haino wander freely through different, compelling sonic universes, often colliding ones. Butcher explores a dense string of multiphonics and resonating sounds while Haino methodically fortifies his metallic walls of sounds. Eventually these alien universes blend into a quiet, gentle ritual coda. The fourth piece begins with Haino improvising a folksy theme on a flute, answered by Butcher’s playful and colorful bird calls, immediately reciprocated by childish, electronic sounds from Haino. The last 17-minute piece is the most enigmatic and poetic one. It develops from Haino’s quiet and vulnerable wordless vocalizations and the distant feedback noises of Butcher. Slowly, it shapes as a kind of a secular, abstract plea, bringing together seemingly weird, threatening sounds - Haino’s explosive feedbacks and disturbing drones crisscrossed by Burcher’s sax flights - still, both determined to set a compatible, compassionate meeting point throughout these unwinding sonic collisions.




And a little more on Soundcloud...

John Butcher / John Edwards / Mark Sanders ‎– Last Dream Of The Morning (Relative Pitch, 2017) ****1/2


Butcher has worked extensively, and in many contexts, with double bassist John Edwards, most often as a duo over the last twenty years, and a bit less frequently with drummer Mark Sanders (check their duo album, Daylight, Emanem, 2012). Edwards and Sanders are, obviously, an ace rhythm section that have served many great improvisers such as reeds players Evan Parker, Tony Bevan, Dunmall, Frode Gjerstad, and pianists John Tilbury and Veryan Weston.

Fortunately, and finely, Last Dream Of The Morning is the first recording of Butcher, Edwards, and Sanders together, captured at The Fish Factory studio in Willesden during November 2016. Naturally, the chemistry between these master improvisers, with such long-term relationships, is immediate and profound, but it is also clear that the trio is not going to rely only on close affinities. All three musicians draw upon their experiences to let the music flow. Simultaneously, the trio operates as a vigorous, tight unit and on complete, parallel courses, they explore new dynamics and textures and keep challenging and surprising themselves without losing focus, cohesion, or tension. The longest pieces “Sand Dance” and “Gridlocks” present this trio's rich arsenal of improving strategies. They shape, shift and morph their interplay in an instant and organic manner, building layers upon layers of shifting rhythmic patterns. They fly from high turbulent skies into sparse abstract atmospheres, search for weird, alien yet engaging sounds, and always sound eager to take it as far as they can possible go.



Stray - Into Darkness (Illuso, 2017) ****


Butcher has performed in recent years few times in a trio with double bass player Dominic Lash and guitarist John Russell. This trio became a quartet in 2015 with the addition of Norwegian drummer-percussionist Ståle Liavik Solberg and began calling itself Stray. Solberg began playing in a duo with Butcher and recorded So Beautiful, It Starts To Rain (Clean Feed, 2016), and he also plays regularly with Russell in both a duo and in a quartet with double bass player John Edwards and pianist-electronics player Steve Beresford (check out Will it Float on VaFongool).

Into Darkness is Stray's debut album, recorded at Iklektik, London, in December 2015 and it features one, intense, 51-minutes free-improvisation. Stray wastes no time before entering an uncompromising, restless mode that leads the quartet into endlessly uncharted, labyrinthine territories, forcing all to shift and adapt strategies constantly. At first Stray sounds as if they are enjoying a non-hierarchical, muscular-propulsive free jazz moment, but then Russell’s distorted-noisy guitar interventions lead to more open and abstract textures, shifting the dense and intense interplay into contemplative, free-associative ones that stress Butcher's most lyrical and engaging side. Later, Russell and Butcher sketch a minimalist, poetic dance that occasionally boils to some explosive eruptions, but soon cools down into another series of fragmented and searching interplay. Finally, Russell leads Stray to an electric, stormy conclusion that propels everyone's sense of sonic invention and draws on ever deeper reservoirs of energy.


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Saturday, April 21, 2018

John Butcher (Day 1 of 2)

Saturday, April 21, 2018    3 comments

John Butcher/ John Edwards/ Mark Sanders – Last Dream of the Morning (Relative Pitch, 2017)  *****

The Open Secret: John Butcher/ Gino Robair/ Dieb 13 – A Geography for Plays (Rastascan, 2018) *****

By Stuart Broomer

Each of these CDs presents saxophonist John Butcher as part of a trio. Each consists of close associates. Last Dream of the Morning is insistently acoustic, A Geography for Plays largely electronic. The musics, however, are defined by the aspect of familiarity, a kind of intimacy in sound, rather than by the distinction in material production. Similarly, distinctions between free jazz and improvised music fall away here. Kinships and antecedents extend from AMM to Sun Ra and they’re being consistently synthesized and extend into new terrains.

Bassist John Edwards and drummer Mark Sanders have become the defining “rhythm” pairing of English free jazz, working together for decades in groups with Evan Parker, Veryan Weston and many others. If this is a first meeting of a trio with Butcher, past associations range from the London Improvisers Orchestra to a quartet with Phil Minton and fine duo recordings with both Edwards (Optic, Emanem, 2003) and Sanders (Daylight, Emanem, 2012). That notion of a “rhythm section,” though, however wonderful Edwards and Sanders are at it, is hardly appropriate here: propulsive force, when it arises, is a function of the entire trio. Elsewhere the three are a union of sonic and temporal explorers: Sanders, who organized the session, is a particularly inventive drummer, and one of the few who can remain seated at a kit and create the kind of sonic richness and resonance more apt to be associated with working with a bass drum and independent sound sources.

The music is often a maelstrom of time: in the 14-minute “Gridlocks,” parts seem to be going forwards, backwards and standing still, all at once and with a kind of purposeful unity. Between Sander’s nest of metallic percussion sounds, Edwards’ pulsing undercurrent and Butcher’s industrial-strength tenor sound, the three resemble some of Sun Ra and the Arkestra’s more inspired adventures, an astonishing achievement for a trio. On the opening “Lucid,” Butcher extends a traditional tenor line, generating lines in which multiphonics suddenly inject themselves amid single notes.

The Open Secret, the trio of Butcher, Gino Robair on energized surfaces, piano and blippoo box (described by its inventor Rob Hordijk as “an audio sound generator that operates according to the principles of chaos theory”) and Dieb 13 on turntables and computer, is similarly built on long-term projects. Butcher and Robair have been a duo for over 20 years, previously expanding to a trio with several musicians, including Derek Bailey and John Edwards, while Dieb 13’s association with Butcher includes the eight-member John Butcher Group that produced somethingtobesaid in 2008.

It’s in the nature of Robair and Dieb 13’s contributions to inevitably blur, but sonic mystery is more than side-effect here, with the two contributing both great invention and refined subtlety. Before Butcher’s high-speed, pecking soprano enters the opening “The Lobbard Change Hisstops” (ambiguity is also a function of the titles), there’s a piping, flute-like sound that only occasionally seems to tip into oscillator. “Dart on Discourse” is an exercise in the beat patterns that arise amidst close frequencies, the result a kind of phantom band in which the trio create other voices. “Olecasandrum” sounds like radio signals in fluid, at times with hints of language just beyond comprehension, gradually moving through other zones, including a soprano saxophone that achieves the dense chirping of a flock of birds. “Last Morning of the Dream” (the connection of the CDs may be inevitable) is witty, bizarre and well nigh indescribable. “Tinflappant” foregrounds Butcher against almost acoustic percussion (an amplified snare?) and a scraping drone, resulting in a spectacular tenor oration that extends to driving, free jazz squall. “Giant Skull Gasp” is a click language, while “Pearlagraph, the Pearlagraph” is at times so subtle as to suggest patterned air with key clicks and feedback.

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