Rhodri Davies and John Butcher first worked together in 1997, in Butch Morris' London Skyscraper and Chris Burn's Ensemble. Since then they have met in a wide range of projects, but have continually returned to duo explorations.
2002 saw a tour of the UK, and in 2004 they played 6 concerts in Japan.

Ten years after their first duo concert of acoustic harp and saxophone, released as Vortices and Angels on Emanem, they produced their second CD, Carliol, a collection of pieces that now dissolve the instruments' boundaries and merge their physical, acoustic and electrical possibilities.
In places, the harp is played by air, the saxophone by physical impact; the harp acts as a resonator for saxophone controlled feedback; the saxophone acts as a filter of the embedded electric harp speaker.

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CARLIOL

Recorded Newcastle, London, Crear.

John Butcher - tenor or soprano saxophones - plus feedback, motors, embedded harp speaker

Rhodri Davies - pedal harp, lever harp with embedded speaker and electric harp. Aeolian electric harp

read: just outside :: Cyclic Defrost :: Dusted

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Vortices and Angels

order CD from Emanem.

Butcher/Davies - live at All Angels, London: 2000
Bailey/Butcher - live at the Vortex, London: 2000

read :: All About Jazz

Suddenly we're inside a church, hearing Butcher skittering out a difficult thread of fluttering noises so high-pitched that they're almost not there, while out of the other speaker come isolated sounds of springy, loosened-strings from what I thought was Derek Bailey's big acoustic guitar but noooooo! It's the unprecedented improvising harpist Rhodri Davies pulling off strange, isolated notes from his instrument. Sploingg.... buzzzzz.... Butcher then joins him in the lower registers (why, in church, yet!), blowing moody, fluttery figures with an almost granulated rough edge. Freely improvised duo playing rarely gets as tasty as this. Niiiiiice.
Tony Mostrom / Epulse

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