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.
At The Hill Of James Magee
At The Hill Of James Magee presents the duos complete performance at the extraordinary monument "The Hill" in the Chihuahuan Desert in the middle of nowhere in Texas. John Butcher and Joe McPhee had never shared a stage before which ended up being an attentive collaboration, starting with a long duo, alternating solo performances, and closing the atmospheric set with another duo. Personnel: Joe McPhee - alto sax; John Butcher - tenor sax.
Drunk on Dreams
**Last Copies** Edition of 300. A long and profound relationship between two radical improvisors has transformed into a multiverse of sound in three pieces. On a curious day in Paris, John Butcher fell into his saxophone and ventured deep into its farthest corners. At the same time Rhodri Davies and his harp slowly merged into an otherwise unknown creature. As always John and Rhodri were adventurously exploring their respective instruments, and in its own singular fashion ‘Drunk on Dreams’ shows…
Skullmarks
The group Common Objects was formed in 2005 by the British harpist/composer Rhodri Davies. The group has had a fluid membership, but in recent years its core members have been the six musicians performing on this album: John Butcher, Angharad Davies, Lina Lapelyte, Lee Patterson, Pat Thomas, and Rhodri Davies. Common Objects performs a wide range of music, from composed works to improvisation. Skullmarks documents the group’s first project in which objects are used as scores.In 2016 Common Objec…
Visionary Fantasies
The 100th record released by Matchless! A series of inspired solo and duo performances from AMM founder, percussionist Eddie Prevost and free improvising saxophonist John Butcher, captured live at London's Iklectik in 2018, splitting the album between solo and duo work as the two morph their instruments into incredible sonic devices, with intense concentration and dialog nothing short of fantastic."Although Eddie Prévost and John Butcher shared the stage at Derek Bailey's 1990 London Company Wee…
Last Dream of the Morning
A studio album between three UK master improvisers - John Butcher on sax, John Edwards on double bass, and Mark Sanders on drums - the trio pushing the envelope in technique and dialog in nearly telepathic playing that transports the listener into their environment, as the music builds and releases in effortless ways that are stunning and exulant; highly recommended.
Immediate Landscapes
Sound artist Akio Suzuki crisscrosses the world with his self-made instruments. British tenor/soprano sax player John Butcher is a leading figure in improvised music. These two musicians have been carrying out duo performances since 2002. The six tracks on this CD are recordings of their duos in Scotland in 2006 and Tokyo in 2015. In June 2006, an event was held in which Suzuki and Butcher visited and performed in places around Scotland that have highly distinctive acoustic characteristics. Butc…
Resonant Spaces
More than a half century into its development, free improvisation remains nearly impossible to define. Of course there are concrete definitions, canons, and well trod paths - familiar idioms, structures, relationships, textures, and tones, but by its very nature - something free, when practiced with faith, it is elusive - constantly shifting and reforming in the hands of those who call the art form their own. Of the improvisers emerging from the remarkable European contexts over the last …
Live at White Cube
In collaboration between Christian Marclay and the London Sinfonietta, some of the world’s most renowned contemporary musicians have been invited to stage performances, including new compositions and live improvisation sessions inside the White Cube. Each performance over the course of the exhibition will be recorded, pressed and screen-printed live inside the gallery. The third performance is with John Butcher.
Good Liquor Caused my Heart for to Sing sets out to expose and connect the …
So Beautiful, It Starts To Rain
In a country and a musical domain where you have someone like Evan Parker, it’s difficult for any emerging sax player to establish himself, but John Butcher managed to do it and with his own personal style, very different from Parker’s. Now, he’s one of the main figures of the United Kingdom free improvised scene and his name crossed frontiers. “So Beautiful, it Starts to Rain” is a transnational enterprising, and another product of the British / Scandinavian connection, reuniting the tenor and …
Tangle
A live recording of the trio comprised of John Butcher (saxophones, feedback) Thomas Lehn (analogue synthesizer) Matthew Shipp (piano) performing at Cafe Oto, London on 19 February 2014. "the standout album of 2016. There’s a raw vitality to the performance, and the music is unabashed and direct in channeling relatively conventional lyricism: Tangle is supremely listenable, and should grab listeners who usually find improvised free music elusive, as well as devotees . . . This is thrilling…
Trinity
The amorphous unit that is AMM has been refining—and indeed redefining—a sound for as long as it's been in existence, and there's no reason to believe that the process this implies is likely to ever stop evolving. This does of course render John Butcher's presence here as perhaps anomalous, but there are no musical reasons to believe that this was the case in reality. The resulting trio—indeed the Trinity—of Butcher on tenor and soprano saxophones, pianist John Tilbury and percussionist
Eddie P…
Fjordgata
John Butcher, saxophones. Michael Duch, contrabass. Jazzfest Trondheim, Trondelag Senter for Samtidskunst, 9th May 2015. Recorded in concert by Jonas Krossli and mastered by Karl Klaseie. Thanks to Ernst-Wiggo Sandbakk and Randi Martine Brockmann. 'I first heard John Butcher in 2001 playing duos with Rhodri Davies and Derek Bailey on the CD Vortices and Angels. I was completely mesmerized, particularly by the two tracks in the end with John and Rhodri playing together. Vortices and Angels is sti…
Routing Lynn
This is the first duo album since 2010 by leading British improvisers Rhodri Davies (harp) and John Butcher (saxophone). In January 2014, together with respected musician and sound recordist Chris Watson, they visited Routing Lynn, an area of ancient rock carvings in Northumberland, northern England. In this natural setting, Davies and Butcher played music and Watson recorded. Two months later, at a festival in Gateshead, England, Davies and Butcher performed along with the 4-channel play…
Membrane
This marvellous release from Mark Wastell’s Confront label documents a meeting of these three heavy hitters convened at Dalston’s Cafe Oto, last March. This was the first time all three had played together, although, as John Eyles remarks in his liner notes, they had all worked with each other, before, in outfits such as Powelchsel (Butcher and Beins), The Sealed Knot (Beins and Wastell) and Chris Burn’s Ensemble (Wastell and Butcher).
This familiarity, combined with rigour and expertise o…
Experiments with a Leaf
John Butcher and Andy Moor have shared a stage many times since their first collaboration in the trio Thermal with Thomas Lehn. Even though they hail from very different corners of improvised music, their musical horizons have meshed through the time into the distinctive duo that it is now.“Experiments with a Leaf” is a live recording from October 2013 in Berne, Switzerland, where the duo was playing in a cathedral. The large natural echo in the great space somehow glued the sounds togethe…
Bottle breaking heart leap
Limited dition of 250 on 180gm black vinyl. An essential document of this endlessly creative improvisational pairing...Californian Gino Robair and Londoner John Butcher first played together on a 1997 recording session in Oakland, California. Since then they have worked extensively as a duo, periodically expanding to form trios with Matthew Sperry (bass), Miya Masaoka (koto), Derek Bailey (guitar), Thomas Lehn (synth) and, most recently, The Apophonics with John Edwards (bass). Robair also …
Conceits (1987/1992)
A reissue of the first LP by the exceptionally fine improvising trio of John Russell (guitar), Phil Durrant (violin and trombone) and John Butcher (saxophones). This group came into being in 1984 after Russell and Durrant had spent the previous two years performing in private with another saxophonist. For this debut LP, made in 1987, they performed eleven short pieces. This CD has been expanded by the inclusion of a previously unissued extended concert performance made a few years later. The str…
Nigemizu
The brilliant sax player John Butcher continues to expand the boundaries of free improvisation. This is his latest solo release. An inexhaustible outpouring of ideas blends with phantasmagoric, wondrous technique to create a richly colored, dynamic world of sound. Not only is this John Butcher's greatest masterpiece, but as a solo saxophone album it is a valuable document that can even be said to rank alongside Evan Parker's 'Monoceros''. The 3 pieces were performed at Shimanouchi Church …
The Natural Order
Guitarist Fred Frith and saxophonist John Butcher are titans within the world of improvised music. Over the last four decades, each of these two men has permanently altered the way in which his instrument is heard: Frith with his (at times literal) deconstruction of the electric guitar, and Butcher with his exploration of the physical properties of sound and extended playing techniques.
Though they’ve played live together a few times, The Natural Order, recorded in 2009 and mixed in 2012, …
Exta
Finally restocked! "Butcher’s sax ranges from soft, whispery purrs to teeth-chatteringly spiteful blasts. Lehn’s analogue synth leaps in a moment from burbling tones to fiercely sizzling abstraction, and Tilbury slips from his familiar melodic interludes and fragmented arpeggios to crashing, seismic attacks on the inside of the piano. What sets this album head and shoulders above similar offerings is the understanding between the trio. It’s not just the way all three move together as one from su…