During the 1990s Andy Moor and John Butcher met at various festivals where the EX were also playing. The opportunity to work together came in 2000 when synthesizer player Thomas Lehn joined them for a Recyclart concert in Brussels.
In 2004 Thermal toured Canada, whilst festival performances include Victoriaville, Ulrichsberg, Parthenay, Mulhouse (with guest Tony Buck) and Vandoeuvre.
Butcher has also played with Moor in the EX Orchestra, in duo and in trio with Kaffe Matthews.
It looks like the trio was created by a computer, such is the perfect disposition of sounds, minds and absolute respect for one another that the three players brought to the table.
Andy Moor has his strings going from a rusty scrape to an ethereal drone of adjacent tones, going into territories near to "Branca/Chatham/Moore & Ranaldo" school, while Lehn gets incredibly various manifestations from his analogue EMS synthesizer, resulting maybe in the most creative synthetist in recent and not so recent years; Thomas literally puts to shame the ones who use Oberheims and Wavestations for a single low note (the so called "Dark Ambient Syndrome").
But something must be said for many sax players, because after they'll experience John Butcher's talent, his multiphonic control, his dynamics domination, the beauty of his "regular" tone - well, they won't be missed when they'll finally put their instrument away, together with their dusty "Real Books".
Massimo Ricci - Touching Extremes
Thermal
Recorded at Studio 1, Overtone, Amsterdam
full info: Unsounds
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