Butcher / Charles / Dorner - The Contest of Pleasures

Tempestuous

Label: Another Timbre Country: UK

"The title of this 51 minute improvisation, recorded during the 2006 Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, refers to the weather buffeting and rattling the windows of the church where the gig took place. The trio lapse into silence in several places, which must have been particularly effective 'live', as the sounds generated by the wind outside would have been even more noticeable.

The resultant performance mediates between art and nature, human and natural agencies, adding an extra level of engagement. At the 'micro' end of the improvising spectrum, Butcher is associated with a virtuosic ability to produce sound from the saxophone by every conceivable means: a forensic, almost obsessive exploration of every possible effect, like pad-popping, and slapping, sucking and kissing sounds. But at the 'macro' level, he has a preoccupation with using his instruments to test and exploit the acoustic characteristics of the performance space, which is perhaps more interesting. All three musicians travel both these roads, but there are other approaches too, including each of them holding long tones, so that the 'beat' of the sound becomes more prominent as the frequencies merge and collide. For me the test of good music is that, regardless of its degree of abstraction, it pleases and holds the attention moment to moment while providing a deeper satisfaction through a - perhaps illusory - sense of structure. Tempestuous ticks all these boxes."-Barry Witherden, The Wire