JAZZWORD - Ken Waxman

Iklectik Live One

Long-time followers of the innovative reductionist sounds made by the UK’s tenor and soprano saxophonist John Butcher and especially drummer Eddie Prévost with his singular AMM group are going to be thrown for a loop with this release. Improvising alongside French bassist Guillaume Viltard, who moves in the same free music circles, the four live tracks on Iklectik Live One are the sort of go-for-broke Free Jazz concepts from which all three usually steer clear. That said this vigorous and multiphonic program could convince any Energy Music fan with its quality.
From the first double pump from Prévost’s kit and widened harsh buzzes from Butcher’s saxophone on the opening “Electric” the collective sound exploration explodes. For his part although, Viltard usually supplies the fluid pulse that keeps the tracks from descending into Energy Music incoherence, he also contributes to the group timbral explorations/ On “Light 3” for instance, and elsewhere Viltard creates flute-like spicatto squeaks that are almost indistinguishable from the soprano saxophone’s altissimo bites before he downshifts to swift strums and Butcher to gravelly hollers and honks as a climax.

That’s the key to this session’s appeal. While more conventionally pulsed that out- and-out Free Music, the trio members uses extended techniques to liberate what elsewhere could have been conventional sounds. For example Butcher’s connected theme variations are as prominent as when he exhibits his repertoire of reed kisses, tongue slaps reflux stutters and thin shrills played by separating the mouthpiece from the saxophone’s goose neck. Viltard’s sul tasto string scrapes are often paired in double counterpoint with Butcher’s slurps trills. And Prévost’s solos are also louder and more overtly rhythmic than they would be with AMM or in other reductionist settings. When not filling the expected role as accompanist with hi-hat clanks and press rolls, his playing includes power pops and cross pulses that make their points by simultaneously stretching the rhythms but maintaining a comprehensive and anchoring beat.
Creative and conventional in equal measures, this is the perfect disc to play for those who fear the languor of absolute minimalism or those who need a jolt of stimulating free improvisation.

POINT OF DEPARTURE - Stuart Broomer

Iklectik Live One

from the longer Ezz-thetics column

The trio’s music possesses something fairly rare in improvised music, a refinement bordering on elegance, a quality perhaps most deeply rooted in Viltard’s particular virtuosity, reminiscent in some sense of Barre Phillips’ playing in its ability to emit a kind of radiant calm. There’s a sense of collective self possession that allows the group to create small miracles that at first might go unnoticed.

The opening “Electric” has Butcher on soprano and it introduces a surprising orientation, a refined take on a certain kind of Coltrane modality, particularly personalized in the metallic brightness of Prévost’s cymbals, Butcher’s multiphonics slipping into his lines, and the relaxation of Viltard’s descending ostinato. After an especially bright Prévost drum solo, the others return, Viltard bowing high harmonics, Prévost rolling across his toms with something of Elvin Jones’ or Rashied Ali’s signature authority, and Butcher mining multiphonic metallic grit in the lower register of his tenor. It wouldn’t be the first band I’d expect to hear paying homage by way of a late Coltrane Indian adaptation, but I also can’t imagine anyone doing it in a more original or distinctive way, Butcher sticking initially to simple motifs, then expanding with increasingly personal phrasing and varied layerings. There are moments in the drums / tenor continuum in which Butcher substitutes machine-like calm noise where the idiomatic expectation is expressionism. Constant evolution leads to a more complex weave of elements, Butcher moving rapidly from drone to isolated tones against Viltard’s momentum and Prévost’s elegant markings.

While this group can make deliberate passes at specific phases of the tradition, it also has a special collective vision. The longest piece, the 22-minute “Light,” develops a kind of rare independence. While the three will acknowledge levels of support and density, there’s also a sense in which the continuum can support radical shifts in individual roles. While Prévost and Viltard construct an intense groove, Butcher enters and leaves at will, frequently entering in new voices, different densities and altered approaches, embracing and extending the range of post-Rollins tenor approaches. At the opposite end of a continuum that begins with the kind of lock-step identification foreshadowed in the mimesis of Moore and Yarde, this trio can find concordance as if they were orbiting planets in a system lacking a central sun, virtually unresponsive to one another’s stylistic gravitational pull. There is brilliant cohesion here, but part of its genius is that there’s also a certain sense of the arbitrary, a quality that continues to develop in later tracks, the saxophone’s role sometimes extending to penny-whistle highs and granulated air.

FREE JAZZ BLOG - Eyal Hareuveni

Visionary Fantasies

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). 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) and later Butcher took part in in Prévost’s series of Meetings with Remarkable Saxophonists (Volume 2, with double bass player Guillaume Viltard).

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.

POINT OF DEPARTURE - Jason Bivins

All But

All But is the second volume of Matchless' series Meetings with Remarkable Saxophonists, this time spotlighting Butcher alongside percussionist Eddie Prévost and Guillaume Viltard.

Of course Prévost and Butcher are long accustomed to working with each other, the former's singular blend of momentum and texture a marvelous analogue to the saxophonist's own playing. The first part of the three-part suite opens up with tuned toms, and moves quickly into popping, lip-smacking sax and burbling pizzicato, making for a good old free jazz romp for starters. Amidst the nicely heated metal and woody thwacks, you can hear Butcher digging into some of his most audibly saxophonic playing (to call it conventional, even though there are lines and intervals, would be overstating things). But there's also such a sheerly avian quality, at times evolving into a menacing spitfire, that you forget those previous passages altogether as overtones proliferate. There are also some extraordinary moments in the second part, where Butcher seems to reduce the soprano to pure whizzing sound, with no breaks in the sound, only a massive metallic whistle that occasionally boils down into burrs and grumbles.

I have to confess that there are moments when (partly owing to his place in the mix) Viltard sounds a bit inconsequential; and in the hot exchanges to begin "part 3" it's clear that the sympathy between Butcher and Prévost is where the action is. But thankfully the bassist subsequently proves me wrong with a truly sizzling arco solo - bold and confessional at once - midway through the 28-minute closing section.

SIGNAL TO NOISE - Bill Meyers

All But

The free jazz comparison applies best in All But, which is the second in Eddie Prevost's Meetings with Remarkable Saxophonists series.
As with the other two (one with Evan Parker, the other with Jason Yarde), the configuration is the classic sax-bass-drums trio and Prevost embraces it with gusto. His playing here is as dynamic as his work with AMM but the starting point, volume-wise, is quiet different; he gets quiet, but rarely silent. Above all, he's playing drums! And play he does, pushing the music forward, opening avenues for the other players, and making them sound damned good, just the way a drummer should.
Viltard, until now an unknown to me, seems to understand Prevost's intentions quite well; he constructs load-bearing structures within whatever rhythmic or energy system the drummer generates, rarely drawing attention to himself, but always making the music feel more solid.
Butcher steps forward, never playing like Sonny did, but towering nonetheless. He has an instinct for complementarity and balance that he can't forsake, but he also knows when the door is being held open, and he steps through Prevost's openings without hesitation, shooting laser beam high frequencies and spiraling, lengthy ribbons that dart with the unpredictability of a swallow banking inside a dust devil. Without compromising his essential self, he contributes to the unstoppable victory of this lively and swinging music.

ALL ABOUT JAZZ - Kurt Gottshalk

Sounding Music

Butcher has become a top name in the chiefly British variety of minimalist improvisation that can best be described as existing in the wake of the longstanding ensemble AMM and with Sounding Music he steps into the rotating membership of that venerable ensemble. The disc, in fact, gives a happily resounding reassurance that recent upsets within the group haven't affected its brand marketability. On this occasion, during London's 2009 Freedom of the City festival, they were even joined by composer Christian Wolff (piano, bass guitar and melodica), who had played with the group for a year in the late ‘60s. Rounding out the quintet (with core members, drummer Eddie Prévost and pianist John Tilbury, at center) was cellist Ute Kanngiesser.

It was, no doubt, a major event in the festival and is an important entry in the group's lengthy discography. But more to the point, it is simply wonderful work. The opening trills of piano (likely Tilbury) set the tone that this will be a very musical moment for the sound-sculpting ensemble and indeed it is for the first half of the single, 51-minute track. The group dynamic turns slowly, never coming off as an identifiable quintet (in fact never even having the feel of two pianos!). Butcher's saxophones (as always, the tenor and soprano) meld with Kanngiesser's cello and rushes and wheezes ultimately, delicately, take over the whole of the improvisation.
It's a fragile and beautiful work.

SQUID’S EAR - Dave Madden

Sounding Music

AMM is the James Dean of music; though the revolving collective tries hard to lurk in the shadows of misunderstanding, their veiled ethos is one that critics, jazz historians and other musicians want to absorb. However, as Philip Clark wrote in his AMM Primer (The Wire 271), "If one could provide a key to unlock the (AMM) formula, there would be little point in listening" — hence the reason why we celebrate the mystery of the bad boy archetype. I digress.

Many look to AMM's past for clues of a tenor which, based on the group's intent to explore the future, is ironic: like a Fluxus poem, the history of AMM is right now, and the present is a curious one. Working for years as a duo, founder Eddie Prévost and John Tilbury (joined in 1980) augment this set with former (1968) member Christian Wolff on bass guitar, piano and melodica, cellist Ute Kanngiesser and John Butcher on sax.
The results are terrific but understandably varied, the crew abstaining from abrasive angst in favor of mature methods of subversion during this 52-minute performance (recorded at the 2009 Freedom of the City Festival in London).
Tilbury begins with a red herring, the gesture resembling one of those "pensive" George Winston circa December pan-diatonic numbers that any novice with fingers on white keys could play to impress a cocktail party ("Hey ladies, I play the piano"). He quickly abandons the notion, but the shock is both a brilliant way to draw in a listener and set up a running theme of rattled expectations, the most important being that the "every man for himself" individuality is globally replaced by a complementary union; Butcher, known for his ability to turn an acoustic space into a roar of reed shrieking and wall-shaking feedback, lays low with subdued drones or acts as an adhesive to Prévost's bowed metals; Kanngiesser's pointillism, then fierce sul ponticello, and Wolff's sound board rubs rise with gradually agitating piano clusters and booming bass to the first breaking point (near the 20-minute mark).
Though this observation may sound pedestrian and culturally naïve, this grounding in form-based "composition" (Wolff's influence?) is nice. That is, with a direction, the listener can not only marvel at the textural gymnastics and advanced sonic language but also revel in / cringe at the palpable tension.

But hold on.
From here the group suspends time in languid pauses and even less gradual movement, forms duos, trios, backs soloists and further smears their palettes (i.e. Wolff's sudden switches from melodica to bass guitar). With ten minutes left, they fake an ending — dizzily limping like a prize fighter with plenty of hidden energy to knock your block off — and soon you're aware of the allegory: this denouement just soared into vintage AMM counterpoint. A slight interruption of the Winston Chord, Butcher's staccato puffs and finger clacks, Prévost's faintly ringing cymbals, and you have another album to scratch your head over.
This is where you read a conclusive recapitulation that ties these words together. In the attitude of AMM...

ALL ABOUT JAZZ - Nic Jones

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 Prevost, is proven in the business of fashioning music out of nothing other than the moment, and the ability to interact—which is a shared human characteristic.

The moments caught for posterity here amount to almost seventy minutes, and often they're marked by Tilbury’s singular approach to the keyboard. For him, nothing is in the way of grand gesture. Instead, his approach is informed to an acute degree by touch. He ploughs what sounds like the loneliest furrow on "Meantime," while Butcher's deployment of long tones lends the music an astringent air, as if the trio is intent on doing no more than toying with the very idea of musical development. However, any tentativeness that might be implied exists only in implication. When the music stops, as it sometimes does, it's always at what seems like some point inscrutable to everyone apart from the three performers.

If that implies a form of highly individual logic, then this could be the very thing that informs "Flamsteed." Of course, it's the case that Butcher has long since attained his own vocabulary in his chosen field of musical endeavor, and here he deploys it as tellingly as he does anywhere on this set. He sometimes sounds as though he's in thrall to the silence, though not to the point at which nothing needs to be said. He is, however, exceedingly careful in how he puts it to use, like a speaker for whom spoken words are things that can never be measured enough. Prevost exploits the silence in a quite dissimilar way, and the same is true of Tilbury in his use of the piano's conventional vocabulary. The resulting music is rarefied, though not to the point at which the listener is alienated from proceedings.

In its very lack of both volume and overt rhetoric, this is enticing music that perhaps coaxes the exploration of new vistas, the exploration of which make Trinity a privilege to experience. air.