The Squid's Ear Magazine



Mysteriously dark electroacoustic improv from the adept trio of John Butcher on acoustic and amplified saxophones, Burkhard Beins on amplified bass drum and electronics, and Mark Wastell on amplified 32" paiste tam-tam, slowly evolving, rich environments in sound.
 

Price: $13.95



Quantity:

In Stock

Quantity in Basket: None

Log In to use our Wish List
Shipping Weight: 2.00 units

Sample The Album:




product information:

Personnel:



John Butcher-acoustic and amplified saxophones

Burkhard Beins-amplified 28" concert bass drum, electronics

Mark Wastell-amplified 32 paiste tam-tam


Click an artist name above to see in-stock items for that artist.




Label: Confront
Catalog ID: ccs 36
Squidco Product Code: 19879

Format: CD
Condition: New
Released: 2014
Country: Great Britain
Packaging: Cardboard Sleeve Sealed
Recorded live at Cafe Oto, in London, England in April 2014 by James Dunn.

Descriptions, Reviews, &c.

"This marvellous release from Mark Wastell's Confront label documents a meeting of these three heavy hitters convened at Dalston's Cafe Oto, last March. This was the first time all three had played together, although, as John Eyles remarks in his liner notes, they had all worked with each other, before, in outfits such as Powelchsel (Butcher and Beins), The Sealed Knot (Beins and Wastell) and Chris Burn's Ensemble (Wastell and Butcher).

This familiarity, combined with rigour and expertise of their respective improvisational methodologies, means this is a very accomplished set. These guys know what they're doing and so there's no faffing about. They're locked in from the first seconds of Membrane 1, setting up a long, ringing sequence of notes, driven by Wastell's metallic tam-tam murmurs. At first things are slow and sub aqueous, Wastell setting up a liquid sonic field that makes everything like it is taking place at the bottom of a cold, clear ocean.

Butcher comes in sensitively at first, his breathy hisses moving through the shimmer like an eel. At around 11 minutes, he casts forth some simple, abstract phrases, before slipping back into the depths. Beins is even more circumspect and, occasionally, it's tricky to figure out whether the electronic tones and chain-like rattles that occasionally ripple across the surface of this piece are him or one of the other two. There's definitely something going on, however, something creating that sense of textured depth that seems, on the whole, organic but sometimes humming like a vast, dormant machine.

At times, "Membrane 1" approaches the timeless, womb-like states to which late 90s ambient post-rave comedown music aspired, but rarely achieved. There's a heavy strangeness and thickness to the sound, which those ambient gurus missed in their layers of synth and whale song. Mind you if I was listening to this piece in a chill out room at 4am after a night of hedonism, I doubt I would be chilling out - rather the opposite, I suspect.

For "Membrane 2", things are rugged and earthy rather than glistening and watery. Again, the trio sets up a dense sonic ecosystem, Butcher braying atonally at first, his blasts punctuated by, hollow hisses and underpinned by a tempestuous, glowering tam-tam drone. Wastell keeps up the intensity throughout the first half, his fast, rhythmic beats giving things a stormy momentum as Beins comes in with a whole lot of wiry scratches and fuzz, jostling with Butcher's hollow, hostile exhalations.

The second half of Membrane 2 is wiry and metallic, sharp, echoing clangs followed oxy-acetylene hisses, all of which seems to force gasps of pain from Butcher's horn. It feels like we're listening to some mechanical entity under duress, about to fall apart. Yet just as suddenly as it started, it stops, gearing down to something more subdued, a series of churning hums and brassy whispers."-popsmargree, We Need No Swords


Artist Biographies

"John Butcher's work ranges through improvisation, his own compositions, multitracked pieces and explorations with feedback and extreme acoustics.Originally a physicist, he left academia in '82, and has since collaborated with hundreds of musicians - Derek Bailey, John Tilbury, John Stevens, The EX, Akio Suzuki, Gerry Hemingway, Polwechsel, Gino Robair, Rhodri Davies, Okkyung Lee, John Edwards, Toshi Nakamura, Paul Lovens, Eddie Prevost, Mark Sanders, Christian Marclay, Otomo Yoshihide, Phil Minton, and Andy Moor - to name a few.

He is well known as a solo performer who attempts to engage with the uniqueness of place. Resonant Spaces is a collection of site-specific performances collected during a tour of unusual locations in Scotland and the Orkney Islands.His first solo album, Thirteen Friendly Numbers, includes compositions for multitracked saxophones, whilst later solo CDs focus on live performance, composition, amplification and saxophone-controlled feedback.

HCMF has twice commissioned him to compose for his own large ensembles. Other commissions include for Elision (Australia), the Rova (USA) & Quasar (Canada) Saxophone Quartets, reconstructed Futurist Intonarumori (USA), "Tarab Cuts" (based on pre-WWII Arabic recordings, and shortlisted for the 2014 British Composer's Award) and "Good Liquor .." for the London Sinfonietta. In 2011 he received a Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award for Artists.

Recent groupings include The Apophonics with Robair and Edwards, Anemone with Peter Evans, Plume with Tony Buck & Magda Mayas and a trio with Okkyung Lee & Mark Sanders.Butcher values playing in occasional encounters - ranging from large groups such as Butch Morris' London Skyscraper and the EX Orkestra, to duo concerts with David Toop, Kevin Drumm, Claudia Binder, Paal Nilssen-Love, Thomas Lehn, Fred Frith, Keiji Haino, Ute Kangeisser, Matthew Shipp and Yuji Takahashi."

-John Butcher Website (http://www.johnbutcher.org.uk/Biog.html)
3/13/2024

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.

"Burkhard Beins, born 1964 in Lower Saxony, lives in Berlin since 1995. As a composer/performer working in the fields of experimental music and sound art he is known for his definitive use of percussion in combination with selected sound objects. Furthermore, he works with live-electronics/analog synthesizers and has conceived several sound installations.

Since the late 1980's he is performing at internationally renowned venues and festivals throughout Europe, America, Australia and Asia as diverse as the LMC Festival (London), Int. Ferienkurse (Darmstadt), SKIF (St. Petersburg), Musiktage (Donaueschingen), Musique Action (Nancy), Choppa Festival (Singapore), Cave 12 (Geneva), The Now now (Sydney), ZKM (Karlsruhe), Kaleidophon (Ulrichsberg), Kid Ailack Music Hall (Tokyo), Gaudeamus Festival (Amsterdam), Liquid Architecture (Australia), Meteo (Mulhouse), Taktlos (CH), Berghain (Berlin), Konfrontationen (Nickelsdorf), Serralves (Porto), Wien Modern (Vienna), MoMA (New York), New Music Festival (Hanoi), Irtijal (Beirut), or Maerzmusik (Berlin).

Alongside his solo work he is a member of the ensembles Polwechsel, Activity Center, The Sealed Knot, Perlonex, Sawt Out, Trio Sowari, Tree, Junk Orbit, Fracture Mechanics, and Splitter Orchester and also works with composers/musicans such as Sven-Åke Johansson, Andrea Neumann, Keith Rowe, Axel Dörner, Tarek Atoui, John Tilbury, or Charlemagne Palestine.

Burkhard Beins gives workshops based on his graphic score system Adapt/Oppose, has published several articles on music theory, and is a co-editor of the book "Echtzeitmusik Berlin - Self-Defining a Scene" as well as the curator of a follow-up 3CD compilation featuring the Berlin Echtzeitmusik scene. Meanwhile he has released more than 50 CDs and LPs on labels like Zarek, Erstwhile, 2:13 Music, Hat Hut, Potlatch, Absinth, alt.vinyl, God Records, Mikroton, or Confront."

-Burkhard Beins Website (http://www.burkhardbeins.de/cv.html)
3/13/2024

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.


Track Listing:



1. Membrane 1 21:24

2. Membrane 2 17:54

Related Categories of Interest:


Improvised Music
Electro-Acoustic
Electro-Acoustic Improv
Free Improvisation
John Butcher
London & UK Improv & Related Scenes
Trio Recordings
Staff Picks & Recommended Items

Search for other titles on the label:
Confront.


Recommended & Related Releases:
Tuerlinckx, Anais / Jonas Gerigk / Burkhard Beins
Au Crepuscle
(Confront)
Double bassist Jonas Gerigk invited two Berlin-based musicians--pianist Anaïs Tuerlinckx and percussionist Burkhard Beins--for a week of musical experiments and exploration at the venue Saxstall in Pohrsdorf/Tharandt, Germany, culminating in a well-recieved live performance; these two recordings are the result of their week of sonic investigation and improvisations.
Butcher / Prevost
High Laver Levitations Vol 1: Unearthed
(Matchless)
Long-time collaborators and iconoclastic improvisers, drummer Eddie Prévost and saxophonist John Butcher, met at All Hallows Church, in High Laver, Essex in 2023, using the natural ambience of the space to capture these three improvisations, Prévost playing primarily on a drum kit and both in a more jazz-oriented sax and drum duo, extended by both players' exceptional technique.
Butcher, John
The Very Fabric
(Ftarri / Hitorri)
Impeccably recorded inside the Brønshøj Water Tower, in Copenhagen, Denmark, a highly resonant space built 100 years ago, where UK tenor and soprano saxophonist John Butcher continues his investigations into spaces with natural delay and decay, through 11 improvisations of discriminating pacing as he finds incredible beauty in floating and shifting tones and instrument errata; exquisite.
Butcher / Charbin / Kanngiesser / Prevost
The Art Of Noticing
(Matchless)
"To celebrate drummer/percussionist Eddie Prévost's 80th birthday, Café Oto hosted four concerts once a week in June, 2022, each a differing configuration from Prévost's history; this 2nd concert brings together Prévost, Marjolaine Charbin (piano), Ute Kanngiesser (cello) and John Butcher (sax), the same group that recorded the contemporary album Sounds of Assembly on the Meena label.
Butcher, John / Pat Thomas / Dominic Lash / Steve Noble
Fathom [COLORED VINYL]
(577 Records)
The debut for UK saxophonist John Butcher on 577 Records is this exemplary 2021 live recording at Cafe OTO in London by the quartet of Butcher on tenor and soprano saxophones, Pat Thomas on piano, Dominic Lash on double bass and Steve Noble on drums, four of the UK's leading free improvisers demonstrating their prodigious abilities in concentrated conversation.
Butcher, John / Pat Thomas / Dominic Lash / Steve Noble
Fathom
(577 Records)
The debut for UK saxophonist John Butcher on 577 Records is this exemplary 2021 live recording at Cafe OTO in London by the quartet of Butcher on tenor and soprano saxophones, Pat Thomas on piano, Dominic Lash on double bass and Steve Noble on drums, four of the UK's leading free improvisers demonstrating their prodigious abilities in concentrated conversation.
Thermal (John Butcher / Andy Moor / Thomas Lehn)
Ice In A Hot World
(Unsounds)
The 20-year followup to their 2003 album on the Unsounds label titled Thermal, the trio of John Butcher on tenor & soprano saxophones, Andy Moor on guitar and Thomas Lehn on analogue synthesizer update listeners with their free and ea-improvising approach through five studio improvisations of incredible detail, technical & sonic mastery, and astute conversational skills.
Davies, Rhodri / Nikos Velitotis
Hotel Art Head [BOOK]
(gwasg amgen)
A curious book of images from artists including Rhodri Davies, John Butcher, Angharad Davies, Richard Dawson, &c. photographed in a location familiar to a touring musician--a budget hotel room--pictured laying on the bed with each artist's head covered by that room's hotel wall painting, from typically insipid to perplexingly unexpected.
Butcher, John / Magda Mayas / Tony Buck
Glints [VINYL]
(NI-VU-NI-CONNU)
The 5th of NI-VU-NI-CONNU's 5-LP John Butcher series and part of a 2 night residency at ausland in Berlin coinciding with his 65th birthday, tenor & soprano saxophonist John Butcher is joined by the long-running duo Spill of pianist Magda Mayas and drummer Tony Buck (The Necks) for two extended works of evolving, absorbing introspection and eruption.
Butcher, John / Thomas Lehn / Gino Robair
Shaped & Chased [VINYL]
(NI-VU-NI-CONNU)
The 3rd of NI-VU-NI-CONNU's 5-LP John Butcher series and part of a 2 night residency at ausland in Berlin coinciding with his 65th birthday, the long-running trio of tenor & soprano saxophonist John Butcher with Thomas Lehn on synthesizer and Gino Robair on percussion, Blipoo Box & found objects perform four perfectly complementary and startling improvisations.
Beins, Burkhard / John Butcher / Werner Dafeldecker
induction [VINYL]
(NI-VU-NI-CONNU)
The first of NI-VU-NI-CONNU's 5-LP John Butcher series, presenting concerts from 2019 in Berlin and Leipzig of acoustic free improvisation fueled by incredible technique, extreme concentration and open-minded approaches to free interaction, from the trio of Burkhard Beins on percussion, John Butcher on tenor & soprano saxophones and Werner Dafeldecker on double bass.
Allum, Jennifer / John Butcher / Ute Kanngiesser / Eddie Prevost
Sounds of Assembly
(Meenna)
Assembled in London to improvise music for Stewart Morgan's film Eddie Prevost's Blood, this release adds much more material beyond the soundtrack, in a superb example of free and charged creative improvisation seeking unique combinations of expression, from Jennifer Allum on violin, John Butcher on saxophones, Ute Kanngiesser on cello and Eddie Prevost on percussion.
Euphorium_freakestra
Grande Casino [3 CDS]
(Euphorium)
A truly diverse set of improvisations, from solo work to large scale ensemble, as Euphorium_Freakestra are joined by European Free Jazz legends, drummer Baby Sommer and double bassist Barry Guy, in a band with leader & pianist Oliver Schwerdt, plus Bertrand Denzler, Burkard Beins, John Eckhardt, Pierre-Antoine Badaroux, Patrick Schanze, Daniel Beilschmidt & Freidrich Kettlitz.
Sealed Knot, The (Beins / Davies / Wastell)
Twenty
(Confront)
After twenty years playing together, the Sealed Knot trio of Burkhard Beins on amplified percussion, Rhodri Davies on amplified lap harp, and Mark Wastell on dual 32 past tam tams, gongs & nepalese singing bowls, performed live at Cafe OTO to record this beautifully captured, contemplative concert of tone, texture and ringing sound, like a 20-year dream reflected.
Butcher, John / Thomas Lehn / Matthew Shipp
The Clawed Stone
(RogueArt)
Matthew Shipp (piano), John Butcher (saxophones) and Thomas Lehn (electronics) in a studio album recorded in France in 2017, a uniquely voiced collective trio of transformative improvisation, Lehn's additions and modifications blending perfectly with Shipp's solid foundations and Butcher's advanced technical expression, for an engrossing and expressive set of recordings.
Polwechsel / Klaus Lang
Unseen
(ezz-thetics by Hat Hut Records Ltd)
The innovative acoustic free improvising ensemble Polwechsel, bridging contemporary music and free improvisation in ways that sound deceptively electroacoustic and comprised of Michael Moser on cello, Werner Dafeldecker on double bass, and Martin Brandlmayr & Burkhard Beins on cymbals & percussion, are joined by Klaus Lang performing on the church organ of St. Lambrecht's Abbey.
GGRIL [feat John Butcher / Isaiah Ceccarelli / Xavier Charles]
Facon [2 CDs]
(Circum-Disc)
The Quebec ensemble GGRIL of eclectic instrumentation, acoustic and electronic, with an open-minded approach to developing large-scale works bringing together approaches to improvisation and contemporary composition, here presenting three works from residencies with John Butcher, Isaiah Ceccarelli and Xavier Charles recorded from 2016 through 2018.
Common Objects (Davies / Butcher / Davies / Lapelyte / Patterson / Thomas)
Skullmarks
(Meenna)
Distributing the group--John Butcher, Angharad Davies, Lina Lapelyte, Lee Patterson, Pat Thomas, and Rhodri Davies--inside the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, Butcher chose 4 shamanic objects from the museum's ethnographic collection, evoking water, air, earth, spirit, ritual and utility, used as a score orchestrating varying combinations of players; intense and profound improvisation.
Butcher, John / Eddie Prevost
Visionary Fantasies
(Matchless)
A series of inspired solo and duo performances from AMM founder, percussionist Eddie Prevost and free improvising saxophonist John Butcher, captured live at London's Iklectik in 2018, splitting the album between solo and duo work as the two morph their instruments into incredible sonic devices, with intense concentration and dialog nothing short of fantastic.
Trio Sowari
Third Issue
(Mikroton Recordings)
Only their 3rd album since 2005, the trio of Phil Durrant (modular and software synthesizers), Bertrand Denzler (tenor saxophone) and Burkhard Beins (percussion and objects) went into the studio in Berlin to record four tracks that bring the distinct skills of each player into focus while accentuating the tremendous concentration and interplay each brings, a real achievement.
Suzuki, Akio / John Butcher
Immediate Landscapes
(Ftarri)
At the same event in Scotland that John Butcher recorded his excellent "Resonant Spaces" album, he also joined forces with sound artist Akio Suzuki on a variety of objects and sound devices to record the first 5 tracks of this unusual album of very free improv, the last track by the duo recording at the 2015 Ftarri Festival at SuperDeluxe in Tokyo.
Beins, Burkhard / Lucio Capece / Martin Kuchen / Paul Vogel
Fracture Mechanics
(Mikroton Recordings)
"Fracture Mechanics" is the scientific study of cracks in any material, an apt title from these European experimental innovators--Burkhard Beins, Lucio Capece, Martin Kuchen, and Paul Vogel--pulling back the curtain on process and creating an impressive album crossing acoustic and electronic improv, organized sound, and inexplicable interaction; recommended.
Butcher, John / Thomas Lehn / Matthew Shipp
Tangle
(Fataka)
After "Exta", where saxophonist John Butcher and electronics artist Thomas Lehn met with pianist John Tilbury, the duo now meet with New York pianist Matthew Shipp for a distinct improvisational entanglement of Butcher's dense streams, Lehn's rich sound floor, and Shipp's thick repetitions.
Butcher, John / Stale Liavik Solberg
So Beautiful, It Starts To Rain
(Clean Feed)
British free improvising legend John Butcher met Scandinavian drummer Stale Liavik Solberg at Cafe Oto to record these intensely detailed yet sublimely reserved duos, three pieces segmenting the album title, an intimate and never extravagent dialog of great technical depth.
RED Trio w/ John Butcher
Summer Skyshift
(Clean Feed)
The second collaboration between the Portugese Red Trio of Rodrigo Pinheiro (piano), Hernani Faustino (double bass) and Gabriel Ferrandini (drums) with UK saxophonist John Butcher, performing live at Jazz em Agosto Festival in 2015, revealing new aspects to their project.
Baghdassarians, Serge / Boris Baltschun / Burkhard Beins
Future Perfect
(Mikroton Recordings)
Three impressive works of electroacoustic improv from the trio of Serge Baghdassarians (mixer, delays, electric guitar), Boris Baltschun (computer, sampler) and Burkhard Beins (percussion and zither), brooding and concentrative sound that unfolds slowly in detail and color.



The Squid's Ear Magazine

The Squid's Ear Magazine

© 2002-, Squidco LLC