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John Butcher & Steve Beresford
butcher and beresford
© avril levi - south bank, london. early 90s.

vinyl: I Shall Become a Bat
cds: The compilations At Close Quarters and FOTC 2001
Fish of the Week - Steve Beresford Orchestra

These Records used to organise Saturday afternoon concerts in their small Wandsworth shop. Beresford and Butcher first played together at one in 1992, and have performed in duo ever since. Memorable concerts include Vancouver, Lausanne and Brighton.

In between, there have been numerous other projects. In particular Beresford's Fish of the Week composition, recorded in 1996 - and different realisations of Christian Marclay pieces. Namely the film work Screen Play (interpreted by the Smaller Brethren), and the graphic works Graffiti Music and Shuffle.

2009 groupings included a quartet with Christian Marclay & Okkyung Lee, and a trio with Han Bennink (at the London Incus Festival).

I Shall become a Bat

 I Shall become a Bat cover On Qbico.

Black vinyl with red effects, cover artwork by Marcel Duchamp.

Side A: Beresford electronics & objects / Butcher saxophones
Side B: Beresford electronics & objects / Sanderson electronics & objects

Butcher's raucous saxophone blasts are the perfect foil for Beresford's more aggressive electronics, which initially sound off like a broken fire alarm before easing into a more Ambient flow. Meanwhile Butcher continues to bombard with a series of inventive and brilliantly timed horn intrusions that bang and buzz like a trapped hornet against the fluid frame of noise loosely assembled by Beresford.
Edwin Pouncey - WIRE.




beresford butcher at freedom of the city
order CD from Emanem.
18 minutes of the duo on a 2 CD collection of music from 2001's Freedom of the City Festival.

full info: Emanem

The semi-regular pairing of Steve Beresford on electronics and John Butcher on saxes provide my favourite music of the entire album.
John Eyles - BBC experimental review of FOTC 2001




The Smaller Brethren
beresford, butcher, lovens
© reinhard sommer - nickelsdorf, austria

Steve Beresford - John Butcher - Paul Lovens

This trio with Steve Beresford and Paul Lovens formed to play at the 2002 Musikprotokoll in Graz, and regrouped for the 2005 Nickelsdorf Konfrontationen.
Since then they have performed with Christian Marclay's video Screen Play at the 2006 Kill Your Timid Notion in Dundee, and in 2007 in Paris and Ghent.

"Screen Play" invites the live performers to provide aural correlatives to what they're watching. Percussionist Paul Lovens sometimes cheerfully did just that, but with the kind of surreal slippage we had in Bruszewski's films.
Loven's two companions, saxophonist John Butcher and soundman Steve Beresford, opted for a different course. Beresford laid in colour washes, mattes and occasional faux Bernard Herrmann effects, while Butcher took his horns on his now familiar, but still challenging long walk out past idiom.
Truly great stuff.
Brian Morton - WIRE.



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