It's probably time I stop being surprised by John Butcher playing loudly (read: at moderate volumes) because not only has it been true of him for a while now, it's never not been true. But within his absolute mastery of internal horn sounds, quiet playing is the petri dish in which to really hear his staggering technique. Moderate volume playing � which for him dates back at least to the fine News From the Shed and 13 Friendly Numbers records, among his first � is, on the other hand, where the always surprising results of his applied physics is heard.

Much of the new On Air by the aurally fascinating trio of Butcher, bassist John Edwards and percussionist/electronicist Gino Robair is heavily inventive moderate volume playing. It's the fifth release on Butcher's own imprint, Weight of Wax, which seems to be the reserve for his most interesting projects. The fact that they've given themselves a name lends hope that this may be on ongoing project and the name they've given themselves � the Apophonics � nicely suggests something about their procedural soundmaking, apophonic being the change in meaning resulting from a slight change in the pronounciation of a word (ie, "sing" and "sung"). Interestingly enough, they're just a letter away from apophenic, the experience of seeing patterns in arbitrary stimuli, especially common among schizophrenics. (Yes, I looked it up, this is how we learn things.) So might we be sensing patterns where there are none in the gradual differentiation of sounds made by the trio of Butcher, Edwards and Robair? This is indeed possible, although it would seem to have as much to do with the discussion at hand as worrying about whether Butcher is a quiet saxophonist who plays loudly or a loud saxophonist who plays quietly. Best to accept that both are true, the patterns are there, and to move on.

On Air takes the unusual shape of a 36-minute opening track followed by an eight-minute and then a four-and-a-half minute track. It's the smaller pieces I find more easily digestible, the opener containing so much information as to risk inducing in the listener a sort of ecstatic apoplexia, It's an awful lot to take in. In comparison, the shorter tracks are nearly like ballads, if a bit jittery. I found myself, between fourth and fifth listens or so, wanting to think of On Air as an old LP, one of the ones that had a fast side and a slow side � I believe Coltrane had a record like that, Rod Stewart certainly did. Of course, the timing wouldn't work for an LP, side one is way too long, but it seemed a useful framework. I returned to the record, however, to discover that the fast and loud opener wasn't so altogether fast or loud, even with the title "fires were struck." What seems to have happened is that my brain categorized it as such as a result of the sheer amount of information listening to the track requires it to process. There are lots of changes in direction, lots of them, while the familiar, easily-catagorizable notion of a saxophone trio is undermined by Robair's subtle and occasional electronics.

I still preferred the 12� minute would-be side two, however. It's more focused, a sort of calm after the storm, even if the storm wasn't so � stormy. On Air isn't just a great record, it's a record that defies expectations, even when those expectations are based on having listened already.