THE WIRE - Bill Meyer
The Very Fabric

The Very Fabric is the most frankly experimental of the three albums, since it captures Butcher dealing with the assertive and unpredictable acoustic qualities of Copenhagen’s Bronshoj water tower. It is hisfirst solitary recording in a decade, but one hesitates to call it solo, so influential is the space’s reverb upon the music. Butcher didn’t approach it cold, having played there once before, but he nonetheless seems to be sounding out what the space does to different pitches and timbres. Lower notes come out distinct, but wreathed in a halo of echoes; feedback blurs and swells into a vertigo inducing throb; high twitters turn into murky clouds that harbour chunks of tone hard enough to raise lumps. In every case, he transcends novelty to shape the tower’s effects into suspenseful, luxuriant music.

THE SQUID’S EAR - Brian Olewnick
The Very Fabric

There has long been a natural affinity between cisterns and improvisers, especially horn players. The resonance possibilities seem irresistible, though as with any "new" approach or technique there's always the issue of balancing effect with basic musical quality and it's all too easy to lay an overly great weight on the former, hoping it will carry the day. John Butcher has a reasonably full track record with regard to such spaces, his horns even occasionally enhanced by the feedback technology he pioneered. For this recording, he finds himself in the Brønshøj Vandtåm water tower, a concrete structure outside of Copenhagen.
The resonant capacity of the environment is apparent from the first note, the deep tenor tone wafting into the near distance. It's difficult (not to mention unnecessary) to figure out how much of the creamy, almost liquid resultant tone is due to the ambience or to Butcher's
own sound on the horns, tenor and soprano, as he possesses a uniquely rich, full sound on his own. Indeed, his almost overwhelming technical mastery of the horns (to these ears, there's no finer improvising soprano player out there) is so great that the cisternal influence can verge on being heard as an abundance of riches. But to his credit, he fashions relatively brief pieces, all between about three and seven minutes in length, each with its own attack and a musical vitality independent from, but lovingly intertwined with the ambient effects. As is often the case in his work, there seems to be a subtle song-like aspect to the improvisations, a partially submerged melodicism that's extremely enticing, if slippery to get a good handle on. A piece for soprano like "Elusive Sidestep", is delightful in that respect, with an inevitable and appreciative sidelong glance to Lacy, but with a somberness and precision all Butcher's own. While each track has something to offer, I find myself really enjoying the ones where he simply pours it out and lets the space do what it will with the results, as in the opening, "Shimmers of Connect I", a powerhouse of a performance. On others, such as "Very Hush-Hush", he pursues the natural enough tack of isolated key-pops and whispered breaths, allowing them to hang in the atmosphere, an effective gambit to be sure, but perhaps one where the cistern has more to say than the performer. Though maybe that's as should be.
In any event, The Very Fabric is a delight, an imaginative excursion into and extension of the saxophonal territories that Butcher has mapped out over the decades and an especially strong addition to his solo catalog.

THE QUIETUS - Joseph Burnett

Nigemizu

Recorded live in Japan, Nigemizu is a potent document of Butcher at his most immediate and unfettered. From the very first notes of 'Enrai', I was transported back in time to the first occasion I went to see John Butcher live; about four or five years ago at ATP in the incongruous surroundings of Butlins. Eschewing the hard blowing favoured by some solo saxophonists such as Colin Stetson or even the deceptively subtle but usually loud Peter Brötzmann, Butcher constructs his improvisations with care and patience, starting quietly on 'Enrai' with softly fluttered notes. His use of space is fundamental: the first track was recorded in a church in Osaka, the second and third in a converted farm space in Fukaya, and there are notable differences in the atmospheres between the two, with the church's naturally resonant reverb allowing the saxophonist to suspend notes in the ether, often dissolving them into pregnant silences. As the piece develops (over 26 minutes), with Butcher deploying increasingly dense overtones, strident high notes and circular breathing, it becomes almost symphonic, an epic exaltation of the power of his instrument and of his symbiosis with it. Apparently, 'Enrai' in Japanese means "distant thunder", and there's no better way to encapsulate the track's power.

The other two pieces, on soprano sax, sound initially more upbeat in comparison to 'Enrai's dense clusters, with bright clusters of notes tumbling rhythmically out of his horn. The sound, especially midway through 'Uchimizu', when Butcher draws out shrill, trilling motifs with remarkable speed, is akin to water racing down a hillside, or the fleeting songs of swooping flycatchers. Melodically, I'm reminded of certain symphonic works of the classical age, when instruments were used as metaphors for the natural world, and again, one marvels at the way Butcher creates such elaborate, evocative suites of sound using a solitary saxophone.

Closer 'Hamon', at six minutes, is the shortest of the three pieces, and shares much of the spirit of 'Uchimizu', signing off the album with a joyful flourish of grace and beauty.
In Butcher's hands, decades of jazz and improv tradition are reimagined and personalised, resulting in a truly unique and instantly recognisable voice."

DUSTED - Bill Meyer

Nigemizu

For Butcher, solo improvisation is a convergence of openness and purpose. He welcomes the influence of a place’s qualities and a situation’s provocations, but he also has the will and imagination to shape sound into forms that are recognizably his, but not familiar. He has made a dozen records that are all or partly solo. Some distinguish themselves by demonstrating his pursuit of a particular technical idea, such as exploring the feedback that saxophones can lure out of microphones or the density of sound made possible by overdubbing. Others respond to a particular place; the peculiar echo of an underground cavern, or a noisy club, or a room subject to bleed from a nearby train. His tone on both soprano and tenor saxophones is instantly recognizable, which might seem like a barrier to renewability in performance. But that consistency is more a byproduct of clear focus and unassailable control of his instruments than it is a tendency to play the same thing again and again.

Those chops and ideas register with absolute clarity on Nigemizu, which is taken from two concerts Butcher played in Japan during the summer of 2013. It’s worth noting that Japan in the summer is nightmarishly hot and humid, which are not necessarily conditions likely to bring the best out of an Englishman. But the Japanese audiences may have contributed to that aforementioned focus. You can’t hear them, but you can feel their silence, just as you can sense the close proximity of Hall Egg Farm’s walls when he drops to a bare whisper and his breathy sounds bounce back. These forces press his music into especially bold shapes, which change with an unerring rightness that sidesteps inevitability; in other words, it turns out in a way that you can’t argue with, but could not have guessed.

FREE JAZZ BLOG - Stef Gijssels

Nigemizu

John Butcher is unique and incomparable. He's is the sculptor of sound on saxophone, whether on tenor or on soprano. The music on this album was performed on two nights in Japan, two years ago, and consists of three tracks.

The first, "Enrai", is played on tenor, and you get a twenty-six minute long discovery of sounds and their gradual evolution, from primary sounds over multiphonics to rhythmic moments, quiet passages and outbursts of constrained power, and despite its length, there is never a dull moment. Butcher takes you along on his own improvisation, which is at the same time as much a musical journey as it is a spiritual and emotional one, and the result is mesmerising. As a listener, you get sucked up in his universe, and wonder at its depth and clarity, you wonder how with some few strokes of sounds, he manages to create a picture that is both simple and profound, that is uplifting and deep.

On "Uchimizu", he switches to soprano, and the tone becomes almost naturally more joyful, with long bouts of circular breathing, more playful, as we know him, trying to emulate the song of blackbirds or other birds who sing their odes to the sun and to life in general, yet then it suddenly evolves into moments of distress and even darkness, with somber whispering sounds chasing away the birds.

The album ends with the shorter "Hamon", yet still more than six minutes, with multiphonic circular breathing starting full force from the very first notes, gradually changing the overall coloring and timbre, often at breakneck speed, and the intensity does not dissipate until the last few notes, which end the piece with a question mark.

Again, Butcher captivates us with his skills and his musical vision, his uncompromising approach, and his talent to maintain tension in three lengthy improvisations, offering listeners both musical and human purity.

SKUG - Curt Cuisine

Nigemizu

»Nigemizu«, on the other hand, shows more emphatically (and once more) that Butcher is one of the best in his field. The two longer pieces in particular stand out far above the lowlands of virtuoso self- adulation. For nineteen and twenty-six minutes respectively, Butcher spans an improvised arc that results in a unit from front to back, telling a story of the lovely art of improvisation that is worth listening to, sometimes a little twisted, sometimes relaxed and teasing, sometimes epic, sometimes casual and focused at the same time. As only with the really great masters, the barrier between man and instrument disappears here and we hear the saxophonist himself standing on stage and telling us a story in tones.

RADIO FREE MIDWICH - Paul Margree

Resonant Spaces

This is a welcome reissue for this astonishing work of improvisation. It sees Butcher visiting obscure parts of Scotland to play gigs in sites – including an old military fuel tank in the Orkneys with a 15-second echo, as well as an abandoned reservoir, a sea cave, a mausoleum and so on –chosen for their specific, idiosyncratic acoustic properties.
If Butcher’s response to these locations is frequently astonishing – witness the serrated foghorn blasts that moan across the void in ‘New Scapa Flow’– so is the way that these places seem almost to answer his forays. In ‘Wind Piece’, recorded at the Standing Stones of Stenness on the Orkney mainland, the eerie pitch-shifted coos that merge with birdsong and Butcher’s own gurgling breaths could be emanating from the rocks themselves. This is a series of duets, really, Butcher not playing the spaces as much as tussling with them, each performance existing in an ongoing state of modification as he negotiates the different sonic qualities of each of his unusual venues.
And, while there’s a sense of Butcher being nudged constantly out of his comfort zone, there’s an accompanying feeling that he digs the brinkmanship that this requires. Raw and hypnotic, time has only increased Resonant Spaces’ power.

ATTN Magazine - Jack Chuter

Resonant Spaces

"If you don’t aim to play to your own ideals, then everybody is sold short. Otherwise you might as well hand people a questionnaire as they come in, asking them what they want you to do.”

This is taken from Biba Kopf’s interview with saxophonist John Butcher, conducted for the liner notes of Resonant Spaces. Here, Butcher is talking about the audiences that gathered to watch his performances at these various remote locations across Scotland and Orkney – including an old water reservoir in Fife, an oil tank in Hoy, a Mausoleum in South Lanarkshire – many of whom were locals without any prior experience of improvisatory experiments such as these. Some audience members left after a while, particularly during the pieces that involved the prolonged emission of piercing high tones, but such is the price for a performance that doesn’t tiptoe anxiously around the potential displeasures of every person present.

Contrast this with Butcher’s relationship with the various performance spaces: each non-negotiable in its spatial restraints and acoustic profile, sucking the energy out of those sounds that fail to resonate and jubilantly dispersing those propositions whose frequencies strike the walls at just the right angle, co-steering the direction of these improvisations through a process of reverberant cold-shouldering and echoing encouragement, affirming the repeat of particular playing techniques and the forgo of others. Unlike the audience, whose enjoyment of the proceedings has no bearing on events, the judgement delivered by the space should be listened to and, to some extent, carefully heeded.

At another point in the liner notes interview, Butcher notes a particular frustration with wind instruments: “it’s a very on or off phenomenon, with the full sound either being there or not being there. You don’t usually get real decay or overlap possibilities, which is such an important part of music, like in Feldman’s piano pieces or Bailey’s guitar playing”. While the extensive echoes of many of these spaces partly offer a means of circumventing this problem – with reverberations loitering long enough for Butcher to duet with them, pressing strands of harmony through the blurred remains of former breaths – the binary on-off of woodwind, and the respiratory cycle that drives it, feels like a crucial component of these pieces. Exhale: a question unfurls, seeping out of the soprano like smoke, expanding in volume and splaying into space. Inhale: the response of the space is taken in, received and processed, funnelled partly back into the generation of the next outward gesture.

On “Calls From A Rusty Cage”, recorded at the Wormit Reservoir in Fife, Butcher’s initial sounds are quiet, almost cautious; the hiss of breath pattering gently through the air, gradually accompanied by bleats of note that become louder as Butcher reacts to the delightful splash of ghostly decay that follows each one. The sounds thicken, becoming louder, faster, spinning in arpeggiations that roll like a wheel around the reservoir walls, clambering up to the ceiling and back down, exploiting the invite of a space that both respects the definition of flurried small notes and the panoramic expansion of longer tones. “Wind Piece” is the polar opposite of this climactic whirl: an utter submission to environmental conditions, with soft breaths whistling out of the soprano and perching upon the blustering winds, ducking beneath the flights of bird song, trying to disappear imperceptibly into the gales that swoop, hammock-like, from beneath. Instead of vaulting and somersaulting confidently across the contours of his setting, Butcher melts into the rhythm and pitch of the weather.

Some of those fascinating moments on Resonant Spaces occur during the dramatic accentuation of harmonic feud. On “Close By, A Waterfall” (recorded in Smoo Cave in Durness), the notes often distort against the limits of their amplification, with quivering overtones ping-ponging back and forth across the walls. On “New Scapa Flow”, the higher pitches almost become moans of choral song, pooling into the damp air of Lyness Oil Tank, separating from the distinct shapes of outward breath to become an entirely separate texture, like the spirit levitating above visceral form (with the latter half of the piece becomes a playful ricochet of staccato, hurling short blasts of plosive and waiting for the delayed impact against the far wall, creating this double act of sudden convulsion and phantom mimicry). On the other end of the spectrum is “Frost Piece”, recorded in the small chambers of Tugnet Ice House in Spey Bay, whose frantic gasps and whimpers of feedback conjure a sense of hypothermic panic, snorting as the oxygen runs dry, curling up in the corner of a space whose invite for collaboration is anything but warm. After all, Butcher is a visitor rather than a guest; the space makes no promises of hospitality or accommodation. Make yourself comfortable.

WIRE - Will Montgomery

Resonant Spaces

In 2006, UK promoters Arika invited John Butcher to tour a number of out of the way spaces in Scotland. The venues, selected for their extreme acoustic properties, included a mausoleum, a wartime fuel storage tank and a cave. This resulting album grows out of the saxophonist's interest in escaping the acoustic confines of conventional venues - work with resonant spaces is documented on the earlier The Geometry of Sentiment and Cavern with Nightlife. Butcher plays tenor and soprano saxophones, sometimes adding feedback and amplification. Such site-specific performances are unrepeatable, of course, but the CD shows that you didn't have to be there to get what he's doing.

Also on the tour was Japanese sound artist Akio Suzuki and, at times, something akin to Suzuki's meditative attentiveness to spatialised sound is apparent on the album. But the exciting thing about the release is how Butcher attacks the spaces: each of the improvisations is highly attuned to the acoustic characteristics of the venue, with Butcher improvising dialogues with the ghostly sonic contours of the playing environment. Many of the tracks allow gaps between sounds for the venue's resonances to be heard, though "Calls from a Rusty Cage" suddenly leaps into whirling circular breathing with a flamboyant glissando (which, weirdly enough in this fairly extreme context, recalls the opening to Rhapsody in Blue). The feedback effects are particularly impressive, but everything from the skeletal rattle of saxophone keys to upper register whistles and stentorian foghorn blast is explored.

Importantly, Butcher's improvisations never sound as if the saxophonist is wearing a labcoat. The developing musical thought is always kept in view. What we hear is the performer interacting with unusual spaces, transforming our awareness of them as he does so. So you really didn't have to be there, you can buy this instead - it's a triumph.

TINY MIX TAPES - Clifford Allen

Bell Trove Spools

Bell Trove Spools is an entirely solo set, split between Brooklyn’s Issue Project Room and Houston’s Richmond Hall, the latter  housing the fluorescent light pieces of Dan Flavin. It is a long and fairly low space, and the saxophonist gradually unfurls long and burred lines in a deliberate fashion on “A Place to Start,” moving from shapely harmonic purrs to gutsy and terse dips in a way that plays off the Texas saxophone tradition (as the late Fort Worth reedman Prince Lasha put it, “coming up from the ground and out through the bell”) in ricocheting swagger. At about four and a half minutes, Butcher digs in a flinty heel and works an almost bluesy fragment. Perhaps it’s in homage to another tenorman sharing the bill that night, Joe McPhee, whose “Knox” seems to be in the air.

“Willow Shiver” is electro-acoustic, with amplification and feedback encountering tongue-slaps and pad manipulation. The piece hinges on two different physical resources: the demarked shapes that result from the proximity between two sound sources (feedback) and the rhythmic, human nature of Butcher’s playing. The lengthy “Perfume Screech” is searing and robust with nearly romantic abstraction at its outset, hinting at the Latinate grit of Gato Barbieri before taking turns into floor-shaking resonance and fluttering, high-pitched multiphonics, as the saxophonist strolls about the room.

The Issue Project Room solos find Butcher on the soprano, clenched and skirling with fluffs, chirps, and piercing lines that are aptly titled “Darts.” On “Third Dart,” Butcher’s puckered phrases become a stately clamber, wheeling and occasionally ducky but limned with unsettling echoes. “Fourth Dart” is a feat, quickly arriving at circular-breathed redoubles and phased, sectional motion that would be minimalist if it weren’t so damn maximal.
Extraordinarily powerful, Butcher’s soprano may test the limits of one’s ear to make sense of the close and complex relationships that are put forth, but there’s an undeniable emotional depth and sheer beauty in his work that supersedes technicality and concept. That’s true of all solo improvisers whose art has become lasting; terms like “research” and “development” may certainly be relevant, but it takes real guts to put oneself out there with only the support of intuition, horn, and the surrounding space.

ALL ABOUT JAZZ - Eyal Hareuveni

Bell Trove Spools

British saxophonist John Butcher is one of the most innovative and influential saxophonists to emerge in recent decades. He introduced a new conception of the saxophone - not just a horn instrument but a resonant metallic tube in which the properties of air moving through are investigated in relation to amplification devices and a microphone positioned inside the bell; using it as a device for controlling and modifying feedback; and in relation to the unique acoustic spaces in which he plays.

The first five solo improvisations feature Butcher playing tenor sax in front of an audience at the Richmond Hall. He  begins his program with "A Place To Start," testing a whole spectrum of sounds within this space, using circular breathing, all with total and fluid command of the instrument. On "Padded Shadows" and "Willow Shiver" he turns the sax into an alien percussive instrument by using rapid blows and tapping the sax body.
The eleven minutes of "Perfume Screech" are magnificent. Butcher still experiments with sound, but manages to blend gentle, emotional melodies. He employs in this open-ended piece a wealth of sonic possibilities - subtle bird calls, playful tongue flaps on the mouthpiece, sheets of distorted sounds, but still balancing between the experimental and the accessible components. He concludes this program with the contemplative "Unspeakable Damage."

The other five short improvisations were recorded at the high-ceilinged marble room in Brooklyn, the new home to Issue Project Room, without an audience. Butcher plays on these thematic improvisations on soprano sax, taking advantage of the room's exceptional acoustics. The passionate "First Dart" plays with reverberating overtones unti it sounds like a sax choir. The "Second Dart" stresses delicate elements of space and silence, while he creates a lyrical texture of sounds that resonate within the room on "Third Dart." On "Fourth Dart," he uses circular breathing to produce a dense cycle of beautiful sounds. The concluding "Egg" returns to his experimental mode, playfully researching sonic breaths.

POINT OF DEPARTURE - Stuart Broomer

Bell Trove Spools

Bell Trove Spools combines two solo saxophone performances. Each is a kind of miracle of resonance, with John Butcher exploring both the internal resonances of the saxophones and the resonances of the rooms in which he plays, the result a kind of complex dialogue in which multiple echoes interact, sound becoming palpable. There's an uncanny combination of orderly deliberation and improvisatory freedom here, a kind of virtuoso calm that extends from machine-like blasts of sound to lines of Attic grace.

On the opening "A Place to Start," Butcher presents a series of oscillating multiphonic long sounds, gradually becoming a moving line, the collection of tones growing more complex, changing and expanding timbre and overtone patterns until there's a hive of metal tenor insects. "Padded Shadows" is all staccato plosives echoing though the performance space. When Butcher amplifies the tenor for "Willow Shiver," the electronic modulation is perfectly in keeping with the sonic exploration that has come before. The long and varied "Perfumed Screech" is the highlight of the Houston concert, a perambulating piece that begins in a dialogue between a diatonic lyricism (one that links Butcher to the tenor tradition of Young, Getz and Coltrane) and dense multiphonic clusters. It goes on to include extended passages of throaty, bird-like warbling and a strangely dramatic passage in which Butcher sings through the tenor, the piece never returning, never repeating its melodic beginnings.

The soprano performance has many of the same kinds of reverberation, though the room seems as different as the horn. That reverberation also includes the historical sense, "Third Dart" suggesting the chirping melodic play that once characterized Steve Lacy's solo performances. With the brilliant fluttering, multiplying trills of "Fourth Dart" propelled by seamless circular breathing, the soprano lines seem at once to soar through the room, occupying and echoing every cranny of sonic space. As exotic as Butcher's techniques may be, there's never any sense of division between technique and vision, the two notions melding in a multi-hued continuum.

ALL ABOUT JAZZ - Glen Astaria

The Geometry of Sentiment

No task seems too mighty or unattainable for consummate improviser, saxophonist John Butcher. On this venture, the artist embarks upon a solo flight captured at various European and Japanese locations, spanning museums and music venues. Performing on tenor and soprano saxophones, he employs amplified/feedback on two cuts, where he shines as a polytonal sound machine of sorts. It's a study in contrasts, where Butcher morphs minimalism with heated phrasings to convey a myriad of emotively-charged parables.
On the opener titled "First Zizoku, which is a piece recorded at a Japanese museum, he uses the echo-chamber sonic attributes to his advantage via zigzagging exclamations and oscillating trills. Here and on other works, the saxophonist sports an angular gait, teeming with popping notes and split-tones. He generates a sequence of neural sparks that present notions of a jittery and somewhat volatile state of affairs while also rendering steely-edged and mind-bending phrasings.

Butcher sustains interest throughout by intimating the implications of the album moniker via a cavalcade of disparate angles. During the piece dedicated to the late, great guitar improviser Derek Bailey, "But More So (for Derek Bailey), he exploits the tonal capacity of his sax with creaky-toned notes. Yet it's all a testament to Butcher's ingenuity and scope, which surfaces throughout the entire realm of this all-encompassing and, at times, mystifying foray.

SIGNAL TO NOISE - Jason Bivins

The Geometry of Sentiment

John Butcher's latest solo recording is another dazzling entry in his catalogue, with equal parts reinvention and refinement. First Zizoku and Second Zizoku were recorded in the dark reverberant space of the Oya Stone Museum (Utsunomiya, Japan), where the saxophonist gets some massive resonance out of overblowing and filling the bell of the horn with buzzing sound. It's as good a point of entry into his sound world as any, as (on 2) he plays notes in a staggered fashion, toying with the decay as he constructs mutant phrases out of wide intervals. It's not just the soundworld of a Butcher solo disc that knocks me out, as impressive as that continues to be (and I'm still not sure anyone has done more post-Evan than this guy). But it's the sheer quality and exuberance of his musical ideas, as on the densely packed repeating phrases of the long Action Theory Blues, the alien music of popping keypads on A Short Time to Sing, or his superb use of feedback on tracks like Soft Logic. By the time of the closing Traegerfrequenz, with its vast echo and chorus of a thousand insects, you begin to feel like Butcher is some kind of sonic prophet, ushering in the doom of a conventional music with his horn and imagination. Bring on the end times, in that case

WIRE - Julian Cowley

The Geometry of Sentiment

British musician John Butcher is better equipped than most improvising saxophonists to sustain a high level of interest and involvement throughout a solo set. There's real impetus to his playing, nothing slack or safe, and he thrives on urgency and precarious tensions. His vocabulary is inclusive yet remarkably free of bluster and stock responses: control and clarity of development coexist with commitment to risk. Here Butcher plays both tenor and soprano horns, and on two tracks he amplifies his instrument and negotiates creatively with electronic feedback.
Vitally, The Geometry of Sentiment draws on recordings made in diverse locations. On the opening two tracks Butcher responds to the unique acoustic of a cavernous space in the Oya Stone Museum, Tochigi, Japan; on the closing track he confronts brilliantly the idiosyncrasies of a wildly reverberant gas holder in Oberhausen, Germany. The music in-between is from more standard venues in Paris and London.

Cultural theorist Michel de Certeau's observation that 'space is a practised place' is well illustrated by the way a room is destabilised and transformed by the dynamic practice of music performed within it, and that's just as much the case at London's Red Rose Club as in the Oberhausen gas holder. In a real sense Butcher is heard here producing spaces. Above and beyond illustrating such a point, however, the dynamism of THE GEOMETRY OF SENTIMENT, with its inspired array of sustained purring multiphonics, plosive popping, breathy fluttering phantom notes and contorted melodic fragments, is directly affecting and exhilarating. Extraordinary music that retains its excitement and intensity on repeated listening.

WIRE - Brian Morton

Cavern with Nightlife

It's now long past the point when saxophonist John Butcher and his solo approach can usefully be compared to Evan Parker's. The only valid comparison at the moment is that both have recently founded their own CD labels. Cavern with Nightlife is the inaugural release on Weight of Wax.
It documents two moments on an autumn 2002 tour of Japan. "Practical Luxury" was recorded at the new SuperDeluxe arts centre and club in Roppongi. It's the only piece on the record to feature Toshimaru Nakamura and his no-input mixing board, which creates quiet almost evanescent environments for Butcher's tenor. We hear him play acoustically and with elements of amplification and feedback. The title makes perfect sense. There's an impressive coherence of form and function, and as the improvisation develops, a feeling of what can only be described as sensual austerity. Emphatically not the reverse of that. Every sound is experienced with calligraphic clarity, it's beauty functional.

Even so, the piece is almost an anticlimax after the four solo cuts recorded 60 metres underground at the Oya Stone Museum in Utsonimiya City, a cold lava cavern which chilled Butcher's saxophone but gave it an acoustic atmosphere far more profound than Nakamura's.
"Mustard Bath" has to be one of the most remarkable saxophone pieces ever recorded. It begins with a trill that suggests Lalo Schifrin's Mission: Impossible theme, and then opens out into an exploration of high register soprano tones that might be birds or bats. "Ejecta" begins with stern, tongued sounds before moving into territory that for a moment (misleadingly) suggests Peter Broetzmann. These are the highpoints of a CD that wisely offers no more than an absorbable 45 minutes of superfine music.

If Weight of Wax gives Butcher a reliable self-determined outlet for his work, Cavern with Nightlife is the perfect introduction. If you weren't around for his 1991 debut, 13 Friendly Numbers, this is an ideal place to get on board.

MUSIC WORKS - Stuart Broomer

Invisible Ear

John Butcher is the saxophone's most intrepid current explorer, building on explorations in multiphonics that began in the 1960s with free jazz players, most specifically Pharoah Sanders though touched on by John Coltrane, Eric Dolphy and Albert Ayler.

Invisible Ear marks a fairly dramatic turn for Butcher's work, representing a fresh emphasis on electronic processes: close-miking; multi-tracking; and amplified feedback. The results are continuously arresting, and I don't think listeners would rapidly guess that a tenor and soprano saxophone are the sources of Butcher's palette. Just as striking as one sound might be, it's amazing that Butcher finds so many different kinds of wind, string and drum timbres within his horns. It's a major way-station in the process that began in 1992 with the first Butcher solo CD, the recently reissued 13 Friendly Numbers which simultaneously launched Butcher's overdub work.

There is a kind of evolution here, from the exotic to the seemingly conventional, though there are pieces that will undercut that, suggesting the movement is otherwise. The CD begins at its most minimal and demanding. "swan style" sounds like a whistle of air escaping from a (digital) balloon, while "cup anatomical", introduces a repeating texture, a grained, flute-like sound of air in a column. The extremely close miking magnifies the saxophone's microscopic events within the continuum of Butcher's circular breathing, creating a journey into the minutiae of the horn that suggests a science fiction element - an Incredible Shrinking Man or Fantastic Voyage - as Butcher (his doctorate in physics) points out the lacunae of his horns' acoustics.

The exercises in amplified feedback pick up on the instruments' key-pads, distorting them until they become underwater gongs and gamelans - lambent, bending pitches. The quality of Butcher's spontaneous manipulations is really at a very high level. The combined bending and cut-offs of sound in "streamers" suggest water bowls and strings or elastics, while "a controversial fix for..." mimics blues harmonica, fuzz-box electric guitar and even bass clarinet. "magnetic bottle" sounds almost like a Farfisa organ.

The overdubbed pieces have a tremendous cumulative power. "what remains", with five tenors and three soprano saxes, is an intense wall of sustained sound, bagpipe banshees or a dark glade in which insect voices magnify to monstrous machines. The concluding "atelier", for three soprano saxes and resonant room, is singularly beautiful, a high clarion brassiness that ties the horns together with a consonant orchestral richness.

This is work of high accomplishment. However unlikely Butcher's means might at first seem, the music here testifies consistently to a spontaneous composer making whole music - structured, meditative, deeply involving.

PARIS TRANSATLANTIC - Dan Warburton

Invisible Ear

"Invisible Ear" is neither John Butcher's first solo album nor the first to exploit the possibilities of multitrack recording - he was exploring that territory on "Thirteen Friendly Numbers", released on his own Acta label back in 1992 - but it's arguably his finest (and given the quality of his Emanem outing "Fixations" two years ago, that's saying something) and certainly his most audacious.
If anyone has any lingering doubts that Butcher's soprano playing has moved out of the long shadow cast by Evan Parker (the idea that it was ever in it is a frankly stupid assertion, given the two men's utterly different approaches to the instrument, but one that still gets aired nonetheless), the opening "Swan Style" should finally put the matter to rest. The upper register of the instrument is amplified (magnified would seem to be a better word) to ear-tingling extremes Tamio Shiraishi would be proud of. Butcher doesn't shy away from the ugly grit of feedback either - the opening moments of "A controversial fix for..." sound like a wonderfully dirty Chicago blues harp.

The saxophonist is a shrewd observer of the scene, acutely aware (and not uncritical) of developments in what Noël Akchoté has amusingly referred to as the "shhhfllllfffwsshhhpfft school of improvisation", many of the younger practitioners of which will, one imagines, be listening in return just as carefully to his close-miked soprano work on tracks like "Cup Anatomical", "Dark Field" and "Bright Field".
Butcher's background as a scientist (he holds a Doctorate in physics) is well known, and there is an undeniable sense of experimental rigour to pieces like "Streamers", where he painstakingly explores micro-sonorities of his tenor saxophone, nudging it towards the edge of shrieking feedback and then standing back to observe the phenomena. The end result is far from cold and clinical, though - "Invisible Ear" transcends the tough self-discipline of its creation to create a sound world of great beauty. "The Importance of Gossip" features seven amplified saxes and a synthesizer, an instrument Butcher had previously used on his contribution to "Polwechsel 3", "Floater", to create three minutes  of exquisite rustling and gurgling, while "What remains" layers five tenors and three sopranos to form a thrillingly vibrant orchestral texture worthy of Scelsi.

Butcher's knack of choosing the right pitches is uncanny, and the multitrack pieces on "Invisible Ear" are harmonically richer and less claustrophobic in feel than similar tracks on "Thirteen Friendly Numbers". The closing "Atelier" finds Butcher exploring the resonant frequencies of the performing space's architecture - Brandon Labelle eat yer heart out - with the precision of a professional acoustician. Trills haven't been given such a good workout since Alan Silva's "The Seasons Part 6".

SQUID’S EAR - Brian Olewnick

Invisible Ear

There may well be no other saxophonist so determinedly pushing his instrument forward, so ruthlessly dispensing with decades of baggage, than John Butcher. This can work both for and against the music that results. In the latter case, there's the risk of performing what turn out to be, essentially, science experiments (not all that surprising considering Butcher's prior career as a professor of physics). But when it works, as I've encountered in live performance and as I think occurs several times on this disc, the outcome can be marvelous in a way that's rarely heard.
 
This is a solo recording, although three of the tracks utilize overdubbing. Two basic techniques are employed: close miking, wherein the mike is attached directlyoutside the bell of the instrument, thus enabling it to pick up all manner of sounds including percussive and breath tones with extreme fidelity; and, most impressively, amplified feedback. This involves the mike inside the bell feeding directly to an amp which is then miked for the recording. On tracks like "streamers", Butcher only manipulates the tenor's keys and does so in extraordinarily subtle fashion, generating discreet feedback tones that are utterly beguiling. Listeners would be hard-pressed to identify the source as a saxophone; instead it sounds like some mutant, electronic gamelan. However, as in his best work, the virtuoso technique works as an equal partner with a song structure, abstract though it may be, that glues the piece together into a very satisfying full performance. Other tracks mass several saxes together, with feedback, creating gales of sound, sometimes clearly interacting with the resonance of the room.

JAZZ TIMES - Harvey Pekar

Fixations (14)

Fixations (14) features material live from 1997 to 2000 on which John Butcher plays soprano and tenor saxes unaccompanied. Some of the pieces on the album, though improvised, resemble studies, in that various musical elements are stressed in them, like a particular extended technique or method of developing a line.
Butcher's a skilled, original and creative artist who has developed a unique vocabulary of colors and textures. All of the tracks here have interesting aspects. Some, such as "Third Bottle" and "Last Bottle" have him combining unusual timbres and methods of construction.
But Butcher is a melodic player with a nice sense of motivic development, and doesn't need unusual sonorities to create a stimulating performance, however, as his lyrical "Woodland Drift" indicates. Butcher plays in an unused railway station on "The Train and the Gate Part 1" and "Part 2" and the location gives the work extra resonance: you can sometimes hear trains moving along in the background, accompanying the saxophonist.

ONE FINAL NOTE - Jason Bivins

Fixations (14)

John Butcher is that relative rarity in the world of improvised music: an artist who doesn't just perform unaccompanied but who truly understands the specific demands and artistry of solo improvisation.He has, like a select few saxophonists, made a genuine step forward and has spoken in a compelling solo voice. Certainly the evident musical pleasures are here in abundance. His improvisations are always top-notch, both technically and aesthetically. The different improvisational strategies he uses call attention to the function of place in the making of music through explicit reliance on techniques that bring out sonic qualities in both his horns and the musical environments.

His pieces are not bothered with chops or notes or scales or anything so mundane; instead they focus on found sounds, environment, texture, and intimacy. In the spacious surroundings of "Woodland Drift", Butcher blows some very lyrical soprano, delving into more conventional phrasing and note choice than one hears in the later pieces (there are occasional flashes which suggest he was listening to modern classical, particularly Scelsi's or Boulez's works for clarinet). But on the series of pieces from the Empty Bottle, Butcher patiently opens up his own world of sound: buzzes, vibrations, and spitting fire with balmy relief.

CODA

London and Cologne

English saxophonist John Butcher is a physical player, incorporating rough edges and key percussion as part of his innate understanding of the instrument. London & Cologne is taut with gripping moments, but two tracks are outstanding. A Thing Or Two pins you to the wall with its aggression, opening like a dentist’s drill before he
modulates the attack, using blunt punctuation and a bone-shaking didjeridoo throb. Shrinkdown, the lone track that isn’t au naturel, layers four amplified and close-mic’d sopranos and swarms with insect activity.
Without the cushion of chords or much echo, the solo saxophonist has to carve a place from the very air. Butcher is undaunted, and commands your attention.

JOHN EYLES - All About Jazz

Winter Gardens

Side one opens with "Sporangia (high)" from London, the bracket indicating that it features soprano saxophone. As so often in a live setting, Butcher begins tentatively, taking time to explore the space he is playing in. So, for a prolonged period at the start, we only hear suggestions of breath punctuated by occasional high notes being sent out to test the church's resonances. Once he has got the measure of the acoustics, Butcher steadily becomes more exploratory, sending out a series of melodic fragments and then interacting with the echoes of them. But even during these, he is constantly exploring and experimenting with pitch, timbre, duration and attack to test out the responses of the building. Although they are listed as Butcher solo recordings, records like this are better described as duos between the saxophonist and the space in which he is performing.

Side one is completed by "Sea Cone," from Milwaukee, a quite extraordinary feature for feedback tenor saxophone. Once he has found the "sweet spot" where his miked-up tenor is feeding back reliably without tipping over into unwelcome screeching, he exploits it perfectly, reeling off a free-flowing solo which should stand as a paradigm of the possibilities of this method of playing. Using no breath, only feedback, he generates different tones by fingering the keys and uses them to construct a satisfying piece that demands to be heard again and again. At times, the rhythmic sounds of the keys being depressed combine with the resulting tones to produce a rich soundscape that belies that it was produced by a saxophone. It is one of those tracks which is waiting to ambush some poor soul in a blindfold listening test; beginning to listen some way in, it would be very easy to believe that, rather than a saxophonist, one was hearing a master percussionist duetting with an electronicist. Amazing!

Flipping the disc, we find "Sporangia (low)"—a worthy companion piece to its namesake, displaying similar strengths and experimentation; as before, the piece begins in subdued fashion—this time, with Butcher rhythmically tapping the reed of his tenor sax before starting to blow. The piece gradually increases in depth and detail of sound as he plays a melody line in which the qualities of the tones and timbres are more important than the notes themselves. As ever, Butcher's technique is jaw-droppingly good but his music never sounds as if it is merely a technical exercise; instead, that technique is employed to create an irresistible narrative that sweeps its listeners along, creating a very satisfying listening experience.
No other saxophonist sounds remotely like Butcher, meaning that he is number one in a field of one. All of his solo albums are required listening. This is another fine addition to his canon.

TONE SHIFT - TJ Norris

Made To Measure

This is a short collection of a half dozen works (1998 – 2017) that were composed for particular situations, for multiple saxophones, feedback, intonaroumori, sound files and more. Like: a Daniel Defoe short story – the “self destructive art” theories of Gustav Metzger – pre WWII Arabic music, and music for Futurist Intonaroumori – multitracked saxophones and feedback. It’s an aggressive and inspiring collection.
Opening with "and sometimes a mistake is the best move you can make" the curious buzz of his instrument is on. One of the thing I love more than brass instruments is someone who can wield one sideways and invert its operation. Butcher does this and then some here harkening to some of the far-reaching work of avant jazz great Ornette Coleman, though instead of an all out assault, this breaks into vignettes of breathing, of searching, sifting, even at times sounding like a vacuum. The man has been at it for going on four decades, so I’d imagine that the years have enabled him an opportunity to explore every facet and possibility, by going to the extreme and sputtering into quietude. So much so that I didn’t even notice the transition into the mind eraser that is Asymptotic Freedom.

Between the Skies opens with a static-laced vinyl and some moaning alongside a slightly middle eastern theme. It’s in this odd space between punctuated jazz and the incidental transitions on a psychedelic soundtrack. The horn tweaks and bellows with an earnest squawk. Creating figure eights I start to hear seagulls and bagpipes – the sax is at the very center, but when it’s broken into what can only be described as acoustic raindrops, the proceedings have gone my side of mad. Butcher also plays on daring pitch, but it resides in the tucked away background as a curious set of bouncy effects invade the front end.

His set of explorations is far-reaching, like the squeaky wheel that casts off Penny Wands & Native String. Percussive tapping aided and abetted by the strange bird-like caws and un-patented broken melodies are at one moment unnerving, at another like some wacky science experiment under way. We play witness to the unexpected of both improvisation, the way the ball bounces or cookie crumbles, the detritus of a modern day happening. And I’m thrilled in the front seat here. I’m baffled as I listen to this atonal orchestra (or is it a trash compactor?). The sense of control (and loss of it) seems under Butcher’s thumb, as everything raises to fever pitch and is suddenly silent in an instant. He continues with blunt toots and blurts to the end.
As Monk Hum begins, emulating its title in the lower range, there’s a split reverb that could be a tuning fork, or an all encompassing drone, but I’d think he’s using the feedback of one of the incorporated strings instruments.

FREE JAZZ BLOG

Stuck

A period of introspection and of closed spaces. The saxophonist uses the framework of one week in June 2020 to play exploratory pieces, often quiet and subdued, each dedicated to artists  who inspired him. He plays tenor, soprano and a "saxophone driven piano" - on Wednesday - which has a different feel to it, with deeply resonating single piano notes, resulting possibly from contact with his saxophone. 

BOOMKAT

Trace

This new John Butcher release on the Tapeworm cassette label features two distinct works from the legendary Brit improvisor, the first (on the A-side) capturing a concert recorded last October at L'Eglise Saint-Merri in Paris, featuring unaccompanied tenor and soprano saxophone solo work, the second (on the B-side) taking more of an abstract and intimate feel.
This latter piece, titled More Of An Urge Than An Idea merges sax, controlled feedback and piano, all seemingly played simultaneously by Butcher in an act of elaborate, one-man-band style autonomy. Across nearly twenty minutes, Butcher coaxes some incredible sounds from his horn - sustaining deep, resonant tides of feedback tonality, whilst intermittently harmonising or punctuating all this with the subtlest of piano keyings. Through certain stretches you'll even encounter some ear-defying percussive runs; it's extraordinary stuff.

In the light of such innovations the A-side's concert recordings could easily seem comparatively humdrum, but in the fine tradition of fellow experimental soloists such as Evan Parker, Butcher's performance is filled with clever melodic developments and ferocious explorations of overtones. The natural reverb of the Church setting further adds to to the power of the document and late into the set, Butcher's staccato, quack-like voicings play off the performance space's acoustics. Trace is quite some album, and certainly one of Tapeworm's most memorable outings to date.

BAGATELLEN - Michael Anton Parker

Horn Bill

John Butcher's "291/5" is by a long shot my favorite piece in this program. Just like Butcher's solo albums reliably offer an aspect of his musicality the others don't, this 19 minute solo offers something quite apart from his solo albums (though I haven't yet heard Caverns of Nightlife). For starters, it's much longer than the pieces he's released. It also reaches some terrifying extremes of intensity that could be a new reference standard in his oeuvre. He pushes the saxophone to such shocking extremes of sound intensity that it sounds like my speakers are splitting open. I think I should put a new age solo piano album in my stereo just to test my speakers and make sure they haven't been reduced to shreds and tatters. Butcher plays with a passionate abandon here that matches Ayler as his most energetic; it's the sound of a total human body set into unified motion and exploding. Whereas Ayler's music is based on folk melodies, Butcher's music is based on the work of Adolphe Sax, so the cathartic passion takes on a vastly different musical character.

Butcher doesn't create a large volume of sound too often here, though there's a section that takes the feeling of piercing birdsong to rare extremes; his intensity is like the spring coil attack of a tiger's nearly instantaneous acceleration into motion. His playing has an urgency of motion sometimes absent in his work. It's a quality I really respond to, something that taps into a kinesthetic modality.

[6:24-7:10] has the groovy forward motion of a surf rock guitar loop. Around 10:07, Butcher hits a fierce groove to put James Brown to shame, though he'd been working up to it for a little while, and for the next 97 seconds his rhythms are so hot it almost feels like a Billy Cobham or Alphonse Mouzon drum kit solo from the golden years of fusion, with constant shifts in accent that never let the meter or tempo settle to a fixed position. More to the point, it has the rhythmic nuance of Akira Sotoyama's drum kit twitches in Tipographica or Tim Berne's knack for letting a groove come right to the brink of falling apart, a feeling best captured in Bloodcount in tandem with Jim Black's like-minded flirtations with collapsing drum kit grooves. The way Butcher squeezes in a quick fast line at 11:12 is like the way a great drum kit solo might use a quick roll fill to jump-start a phrase. The short scalar run in [11:44-11:46] is a rhythmic lapse that causes Butcher to lose his momentum. The groove disintegrates and he shifts into staccato phrases for a short bit, and then defaults to his sicko birdsong freakout mode, which is always welcome to my ears because I just can't get enough of harsh, pitch-pitched music, especially if it has a trilled or buzzing quality. That must be why I'm so infatuated with Michel Doneda's music.

Incidentally, bearing in mind that this program presents a succession of six performances in the same concert, and given that Butcher is the most aesthetically flexible of the six players, I can't help but wonder if his playing in this piece was partially shaped in response to the music that came earlier in the evening. That would be part and parcel of freely improvising I suppose.

DUSTED - Bill Meyer

Setting the Spirit

When COVID dropped the curtain on live performance last year, English saxophonist John Butcher swiftly pivoted to releasing a series of download-only concert recordings via Bandcamp called The Memory of Live Music. Before the year was out, he’d issued seven concert recordings, and while they proved worthy additions to his catalog, they also compounded one loss with another. For some of us, a record you can’t pick up and hold feels a little too reduced.

For those who find download-only music a little too close to nothingness for comfort, Setting the Spirit may be a welcome change of pace. The album-length cassette has been released by Beartown Records, an English label so committed to physical releases that it offers no downloads at all. It contains concert recordings that were done at Issue Project Room in 2010 and 2011, as well as a brief piece that Butcher played at St. Bride’s Church in Liverpool in 2006. Each revisits one of the strategies that Butcher has used to transcend the solitude of solo performance.

“Stove Writing” exploits IPR’s natural delay. Butcher is a master at turning potentially antagonist acoustics to his advantage, and he plays the room sound as adroitly as he does his tenor. He uses pure, drawn-out high pitches to secure a noticeable echo, and exploits the space’s magnifying potential to make his multiphonics bristle. The high ceiling of St. Bride’s imposes a similarly lively influence upon “Nosed by Fishes.” Butcher plays quite simply, linking two alternating notes via circular breathing, and lets the reverberant space create a stream of sounds that course around his eel-like, wriggling figures. “Rain like Pitchforks” occupies the tape’s flip side. Butcher has made several overdubbed recordings over his career, and this piece, while played live, recreates their density. While Butcher plays tenor, a swarm of sound files overtakes him. Each file presents a different mode of attack; some congeal into a drone like a squadron of propeller-driven airplanes, while others tear at the continuous sounds’ surface.

Each format brings its own challenges, and it’s fair to say that a lot of recent, short-run cassettes are pretty cheaply made. Beartown, however, has gotten this one right. The tape gives the music a certain sonic density, and J-card’s image of a cactus foreshadows the prickliness of the music within.