John Butcher
John Butcher is an English saxophonist, improviser and composer. John Butcher's work ranges through improvisation, his own compositions, multitracked pieces and explorations with feedback and extreme acoustics. Originally a physicist, he left academia in '82, and has since collaborated with hundreds of musicians.
John Butcher is an English saxophonist, improviser and composer. John Butcher's work ranges through improvisation, his own compositions, multitracked pieces and explorations with feedback and extreme acoustics. Originally a physicist, he left academia in '82, and has since collaborated with hundreds of musicians.
Here And How
"Three musicians who seem like impressionist painters, building, stroke by stroke, on small scale, finally creating a strong statement for the fresh catalogue of the label." - Fotis Nikolakopoulos, Freejazzblog
Lights
Tip! Recorded at the concert marking the release of their previous album (Exta, Fataka 7, 2013), Lights is the second meeting of the trio of John Butcher, Thomas Lehn and John Tilbury. Carefully edited (nothing drastic, just some judicious trimming the way a photographer might crop an image, reframing it to make it more concentrated), Lights turns the two set continuum of the concert into four distinct pieces.
But Everything Now Left Before It Arrived
*2023 stock. 300 copies limited edition* Guitarist John Russell, a leading figure on Britain's improvised music scene, passed away on January 19, 2021. Born in December 1954, Russell started performing improvised music in London in his late teens, and for many years he toured and gave concerts not only in the UK and Europe but throughout the world. Known as a Japanophile, Russell traveled to Japan for the first time in 2001, and subsequently visited the country many times, including as recently …
The Very Fabric
*300 coipes limited edition* "The Brønshøj Vandtårn is a concrete water tower, built almost a hundred years ago in the suburbs of Copenhagen. It's 20m wide and 34m high - smaller than some similar shapes I've played in, but with a large, lingering reverberation. Some sounds seem to float away as if through liquid, others acquire a shifting haze, and some just prefer to sit around. Thomas Buhl-Wiggers, of the Cejero festival and label, kindly invited me to play there in the summer of 2022 and arr…
Braids
"Here, then, are three men who have, if you will, won the argument already. They don’t need excess volume or headline soloing to get their message across. Their message is inscribed in elegant lower-case and rarely used aural fonts. You will find yourself leaning forward because not a note or whisper should be missed ..." - Brian Morton
The Art Of Noticing
'Making a journey to a Bright Nowhere' series - marking Eddie Prévost's 80th birthday.
Volume 2, Cafe OTO 16th July 2022
Ice In A Hot World
Thermal (John Butcher / Andy Moor / Thomas Lehn) formed in 2001, three musicians from different musical backgrounds, evolving along their personal routes to meet in free improvisations. For twenty years they’ve been taking their subtle and explosive music throughout Europe. Unsounds released their first album Thermal in 2003. In 2023 the trio of quiet giants comes back with Ice in a Hot World, a new album recorded live in Avignon. The Thermal powerhouse has become highly confident but spontaneit…
Six Hands At An Open Door
Persistence of Sound celebrates the composer Richard Orton (1940–2013) with a selection of electroacoustic and computer music from across his career.
Cold Duck
No relation to the sparkling wine of the same name, Cold Duck is instead a series of nine biting improvisations by S4, an ad-hoc, all-star quartet of soprano saxophone innovators – one British, John Butcher, and the others Swiss: Urs Leimgruber, Hans Koch and Christian Kobi, the last of whom is also a member of the all-saxophone Konus Quartett, which interprets notated music. Designated by Roman numerals, Cold Duck’s tracks, lasting from barely one minute to more than 12, could be the auditory …
Live at Cafe Oto
CD version. Japanese bluesman Kan Mikami is nothing less than an unalloyed force of nature; a skin-shredding blast of frozen wind from the poor, rural north of Japan that he calls home. In the late 1960s, like thousands of other Japanese young people Mikami made his way to Tokyo in search of a life different from that of his parents. Since then he has forcefully carved out a space for himself in the culture as a modernist poet, a raging folk singer, an author, an actor, an engaging TV personalit…
Glints
"The three musicians seem to exchange and overlap tones, creating the feeling of a single and continuous arc extending, curving in space, a kind of bridge or thoroughfare outward." – Stuart Broomer (liner notes) Magda Mayas piano John Butcher tenor and soprano saxophones Tony Buck drums
Lamenti Dall'infinito
"If this quartet most resembles a jazz band among these Berlin recordings, it might be in its speculative assembly. [...] It’s akin to a novel, Julio Cortazar’s Hopscotch, designed with multiple reading sequences, or Nanni Balestrini’s Tristano, in which the order of paragraphs is different in every single copy." – Stuart Broomer (liner notes) Liz Allbee trumpet John Butcher tenor and soprano saxophones Ignaz Schick turntables, sampler, electronics Marta Zapparoli tapes, reel to reel tape machin…
Shaped & Chased
Tip! "Lehn and Robair are particularly well-matched. Lehn is a musician who came to electronics from the piano, while Robair’s resources include both electronics and percussion. Each matches readily with acoustics and circuitry and creates a remarkable bridge between the two with Butcher, whose saxophone playing can assume both percussion and oscillator-like characteristics." – Stuart Broomer (liner notes) John Butcher tenor and soprano saxophones Thomas Lehn analogue EMS Synthi AKS Gino Robair …
La Pierre Tachée
"… a kind of ideal duet, no imitation conversation but two simultaneous composers each repeatedly provoked and silenced, prodded and enchanted by the other…" – Stuart Broomer (liner notes) Sophie Agnel piano John Butcher tenor and soprano saxophones
Induction
"Improvised music at this level of concentration may touch the roots of human culture, the transformative power of the cave and the paintings of Lascaux and Altamira." – Stuart Broomer (liner notes) Burkhard Beins percussion John Butcher tenor and soprano saxophones Werner Dafeldecker double bass
Iklectik Live One
Matchless Recordings presents a live concert by Eddie Prévost, John Butcher and Guillaume Viltard recorded at Iklectik, in London, UK, on November 23rd, 2016, by Giovanni de Rovere. The album includes four tracks performed by John Butcher - Tenor Saxophone, Soprano Saxophone, Eddie Prévost - Drums, Guillaume Viltard - Double Bass.
The Clawed Stone
Matthew Shipp (piano), John Butcher (saxophones) and Thomas Lehn (electronics) in a studio album recorded in France in 2017, a uniquely voiced collective trio of transformative improvisation, Lehn's additions and modifications blending perfectly with Shipp's solid foundations and Butcher's advanced technical expression, for an engrossing and expressive set of recordings.
"They manage to perfectly combine the many elements of the music while always keeping their individual identities intact."- Ro…
Taking the Dog for a Walk
After Sunny’s time now, his authoritative portrait of the American Free jazz drumming legend Sunny Murray, Luxembourg filmmaker Antoine Prum turns his attention to the British Free Improvised Music scene in this new feature-length music documentary. Branching out from a three-day festival in Berlin conceived and organised for the purpose of the film, Taking the Dog for a Walk maps the scene of British Improvisers, past and present, retracing the road that led from its emergence and emancipation …
Crucial Anatomy
The Last Dream of the Morning is the new band from three UK masters of contemporary improvised music – they released a trio CD under this title on Relativ Pitch (NYC) in 2017, now choosing it for their bandname for continuing activities. Recorded by Shaun Crook at Cafe Oto, London on 8 August 2018. Mixed and Mastered by John Butcher.Line-up:John Butcher: tenor & soprano saxophonesJohn Edwards: double bassMark Sanders: percussion
Fictional Souvenirs
**300 copies** Performing in concert at Iklectik in London in 2017, the UK and Norwegian free improvising trio of Pat Thomas on Moog, Theremin and IPad based electronics, John Butcher on saxophones, and Ståle Liavik Solberg on drums and percussion, impress through a mix of masterful free playing and eclectic electroacoustic conversations, an adventurous and wonderfully unpredictable set.