WIRE - Richard Thomas - 2015

Conceits

Conceits moves with a sense of purpose and direction, even if the map Butcher, Durrant and Russell work from has as many whorls and curlicues as a human fingerprint. The bulk of the album was recorded at South Hill Park Studio, Bracknell in 1987 and released on the Acta label.
It's still full of vitality, zest, wit and intelligence. There's a strong sense of intense real-time listening and analysis on the part of the players; and along with the concord there is also discord: the reeds, string and brass either emulate or starkly caricature each other. The ultimate goal, though, is the pursuit of an acoustic commonality, synthesis.

In terms of dynamics the trio sometimes show great restraint, at others they're relentlessly wild. The music across the 11 pieces of the original album is suggestive of organic forms; as cold and barbed as a thorn bush dusted in frost, or evocative of the gentility, fecundity and warmth of sitting in a meadow in summertime. There's superb interplay between the instruments, with Durrant alternating between esophageal speech on trombone and material physics tests for violin, generating sounds that resemble vocalisations of foxes or light joinery. Butcher is either wonderfully ornamental and lyrical, or hard and punctuative. Russell is a perfect foil for both players, emulating, mocking, shadowing, ducking or contradicting each statement and gesture.

These 11 pieces are appended by Soft Hours And Solidities, a live recording captured by Mats Gustafsson in Stockholm in 1992. It makes for a ponderous and introspective coda. But Conceits itself is more than just a significant work in the canon of free improvising; it's a marvellous document of what humans are capable of when they work collectively.

WIRE - Richard Cook - 1988

Conceits

Some might think this music was made in a state of obliviousness. In many ways, it could have come out of the fertile period that improvising enjoyed in the mid-70s. Russell's guitar is even less glamorous than Derek Bailey's; Butcher’s vocabulary is centred on pecks and snarls; Durrant's dry violin scrapes and flatulent trombone are hardly sweeteners. Yet the music has tremendous creative tension.

Most of the 11pieces are very short - they average about three minutes each - and the endings come suddenly but inevitably. As a result, each spontaneous piece seems absolutely definite in shape. The sound is never dense. It can be terrifically violent or lonely and remote - sometimes within the duration of the same track. A piece like "F.T.T." is almost perfect; one imagines that every note is a necessary part of the design. Sometimes, as in "Tumble", they construct something fragile and lustrous without letting in anything even vaguely pretty.

The sound is expertly managed, aggressively close but natural and unvarnished. There's been a drift away from improvised music of late, as if it were dying out. The point that this record is nothing "new", yet is entirely fresh, is evidence for looking the other way. Bereft of rambling or dead ends, it merits your finest attention.

 JAZZ-KVADRAT - Aleksandr Chechott

The Scenic Route

This, it seems, is not even the avant-garde - it is avant-avant-garde. John Butcher is currently the most radical saxophone experimentator on the planet. On this disc you can hear a multitude of quite non-saxophone-like sounds that the saxophone can produce. His instrument hisses, babbles, rustles, squeals, whines, cackles, snorts and even drones like a damaged water-tap. And at other times it sounds like the flute or reed-pipe.

Phil Durrant's violin mainly adds nuances and hues to the saxophone's intricate escapades and phantasies. Only from time to time, for a very short while, they seem to swap places. And then - well, everything is filled with unimaginable grating.
But the trio's most original musician is the guitarist - John Russell. He has invented an entirely new principle of guitar playing. Although he possesses excellent technique, he nevertheless makes it seem as if he was holding a guitar in his hands for the first time and, not knowing what it was, set out to investigate its sound-production capabilities. This includes even its capabilities as a percussive instrument. Is there anything he does not do with his guitar's strings? He thumps on them, lashes them and deals them mighty blows. And then he strokes them tenderly, producing a barely audible whisper.
All this put together, if one forgets that it is people playing, creates a strangely mystical atmosphere - literally as if somewhere on a marsh, in an impassable thicket in the woods, where there are all kinds of huts on chickens' legs and other evil spirits...