Butcher, John / Kurzmann, Christof

The Big Misunderstanding Between Hertz and Megahertz

Label: Potlatch Country: France

"Assembled from two recordings from September 2002 and another one from April 2003, The Big Misunderstanding Between Hertz and Megahertz documents one of John Butcher's less obvious collaboration projects. This is not the first time that the saxophonist duets with an electronician, as his albums with Phil Durrant and Toshimaru Nakamura can testify, but in these 45 minutes with laptop artist Christof Kurzmann, he pulls his saxophones deeper than ever into the realm of electronics.

His trills, burps, rasps, controlled feedbacks and breath intakes have never sounded so non-acoustic here, where they are accompanied by electronic...trills, burps, rasps, feedbacks and various textures that can be mistaken for breath intakes. No, this is not a game of imitation -- Kurzmann also produces a number of more "pure" electronic sounds --, but the two improvisers are successful in blending their individual approaches. For instance, in the short Bee Space, everything heard seems to come from a single performer. In Shilling, sax feedback and electronics first meld together, before each musician takes a few steps away from the other, concluding the piece in more typical sax-and-electronics fashion (that is, a sax that sounds a bit more like a sax and electronics that paint their own playground instead of messing around with the other guy's).

The Big Misunderstanding... offers nine rather short pieces -- four under three minutes, none longer than nine -- featuring tight, dense, rich improvisations. Kurzmann is extremely resourceful and Butcher engages him with what sounds like the thrill of discovery. In a year where Butcher followers have been extremely well treated already (Polwechsel's Archives of the North, The Contest of Pleasures' Albi Days), this album turns out to be another keeper."-