FREE JAZZ BLOG- Stuart Broomer

A Geography for Plays

The Open Secret, the trio of Butcher, Gino Robair on energized surfaces, piano and blippoo box (described by its inventor Rob Hordijk as “an audio sound generator that operates according to the principles of chaos theory”) and Dieb 13 on turntables and computer, is built on long-term projects. Butcher and Robair have been a duo for over 20 years, previously expanding to a trio with several musicians, including Derek Bailey and John Edwards, while Dieb 13’s association with Butcher includes the eight-member John Butcher Group that produced somethingtobesaid in 2008.

It’s in the nature of Robair and Dieb 13’s contributions to inevitably blur, but sonic mystery is more than side- effect here, with the two contributing both great invention and refined subtlety. Before Butcher’s high-speed, pecking soprano enters the opening “The Lobbard Change Hisstops” (ambiguity is also a function of the titles), there’s a piping, flute-like sound that only occasionally seems to tip into oscillator. “Dart on Discourse” is an exercise in the beat patterns that arise amidst close frequencies, the result a kind of phantom band in which the trio create other voices. “Olecasandrum” sounds like radio signals in fluid, at times with hints of language just beyond comprehension, gradually moving through other zones, including a soprano saxophone that achieves the dense chirping of a flock of birds. “Last Morning of the Dream” (the connection of the CDs may be inevitable) is witty, bizarre and well nigh indescribable. “Tinflappant” foregrounds Butcher against almost acoustic percussion (an amplified snare?) and a scraping drone, resulting in a spectacular tenor oration that extends to driving, free jazz squall. “Giant Skull Gasp” is a click language, while “Pearlagraph, the Pearlagraph” is at times so subtle as to suggest patterned air with key clicks and feedback.

DUSTED - Bill Meyer

A Geography for Plays

The geography under consideration here is a set of relationships, aesthetic approaches and sound-making implements that are more or less under the control of the people using them. Englishman John Butcher plays soprano and tenor saxophones and microphone feedback. Some know American Gino Robair as a percussionist and others as the former editor of Electronic Musician magazine; he is credited here with energized surfaces, piano and Blippoo Box, a synthesizer with chaos programmed into its circuits. And dieb13 is the stage name of Dieter Kovacic, a Viennese turntablist and electronic musician who has recorded and performed on his own and with efzeg, Burkhard Stangl and Mats Gustafsson. They’re all improvisers shaped by the history of electronic music but not necessarily committed to emulating it by electronic means.

So what’s the Open Secret? Most concretely, it’s the name of the band. Open secrets are things that are supposed to be secret, but everybody knows. You know, like everybody knows who the Residents really are, and everyone knew that Franklin Roosevelt was actually wheelchair bound. More candidly, an open secret is information that is incompletely concealed and wreathed in expectation and mystery. What do you mean, you don’t know? Everybody knows that. Or do they? Wait, you don’t know who the Residents really are? Me neither.

It’s a known fact that Butcher and Robair have been playing together for over 20 years, and that dieb13 joined them both in the John Butcher Group a decade ago. It is also well established that they’ve all made a point of working outside their instruments’ prescribed parameters, but don’t accept the discovery and articulation of out sounds to be a sufficient end. The sounds one makes, strange or otherwise, have meaning in relation to the sounds one has made before and the sounds the other players are making. So maybe the open secret is that even though everyone knows what they guys sound like together, you never really know if what they’re doing will work again since the sound you’re making derives its meaning from a matrix of associations to what you’ve done in the past, how it works with and against what the other musicians or doing, and how they respond to it. There’s no wrong note, just the next note, right?
But to have an open secret, you need to have at least an illusion that you know what’s happening some of the time. This record also has its share of decisive, lucid exchanges. You might not know exactly how Robair is energizing the snare drum on “Tinflappant,” but you’ll recognize its groan. And there’s no mistaking the chunky, serrated sound of Butcher’s tenor curling, halting, and doubling back through the piece’s evolving sonic obstacle course of drums and drones.

But wait a minute, what’s making those drones? Kovacic’s playback implements allow him to feed sounds that might be from other musicians, sessions or records. But he doesn’t just sample and regurgitate. His manipulations range from the delightfully obvious (speed that record up!) to the ultra-slippery, and its at the latter end of the spectrum that his actions combine most productively with those of his fellow players. Feedback, feedback and feedback twist together on “Dart On Discourse.” Or is some of that feedback a bowed cymbal? Was it produced in the moment, or replayed from another record? Does that matter? Why? This music doesn’t just happen, it invites you to think about how you respond to what’s happening and why, and that’s what makes it an especially rewarding addition to its participants’ burgeoning discographies.

LOUDER THAN WAR - Paul Margree

Bottle Breaking Heart Leap

It starts suddenly, with a frantic sawing sound as if some poor bugger trapped in a coffin and armed only with a nail file is trying to saw their way out. Then it is almost silent, before some metallic rattles and whines disturb the muggy closeness. Suddenly a sequence of fast chirrups burst forth. Have we finally broken free into the biosphere?
This is John Butcher and Gino Robair’s fourth recording as a duo – they also play together in several trios and in the seven-piece John Butcher Group – continually expanding a relationship that started in 1997. It’s a vinyl-only release, documenting a live date in Leeds from 2013. It’s also feisty and vital. The pair has an instinctive, almost telepathic relationship gained from their decade and a half (ish) of playing and improvising together and it shows with a performance that, at different points, enables each player to explore their own delicate sound world or combine to form a surging cacophony that is much more than the sum of its parts.
They’re comfortable enough with each other not to stand on ceremony. There’s none of the gentle faffing around that you get on many free improv sessions, that gradual exploration of space and sound that used to signal mutual respect and listening but then became a set of stock gestures. They’re straight into it with gusto, hurtling to the edge of the universe with a dynamic energy.

At points, there’s so much going on that it’s hard to believe there are just two people playing here. Listen out for the bit about five and a half minutes in on the first side, Bottle Heart, when Butcher’s horn starts quacking and squealing as Robair lets rip with sounds that seem more like howls of a pained mammoth than any human instrument.
Towards the end of that first side – at about 10 minutes – we’re treated to a frenetic outburst of scrunching and metallic and scratching from Robair, which is strafed by Butcher’s scrambled gargles. We seem to have dropped down to micro scale, the sounds of an insect village. Soon after, we’re back in the room, with groovy tom rolls and wide open skronky blasts. I like this section in a kind of Cab-Calloway-meets-AMM, but it’s soon dismantled in a cacophony of brassy crashes.
It’s this mystery and drama that helps make the record so enjoyable. Basically, Bottle Breaking Heart Leap is a sax and percussion album whose defining characteristic is that it sounds utterly unlike a sax and percussion album. Even by the standards of free improvisation, which prides itself in subverting those old, rather staid, jazz configurations of duo, trio and so on, this is an adventurous record, at times resembling a seething cyborg ecosystem made up of many separate yet interdependent parts.
Part of the appeal of this approach is due to Robair’s own aesthetic, often eschewing drums and sticks for a whole variety of what he calls ‘energized surfaces’ – bowing polystyrene plates, using rubber balls to create squishy, fricative sounds, blowing across snare drum heads and so on – a methodology he’s developed painstakingly over years playing with all sorts of experimental and avant-garde musicians. He, like Butcher, has enough in the tank to keep things interesting throughout this 30-minute performance.
This is in particular evidence during the second half of the performance, on what is this record’s second side, Breaking Leap. At about four and half minutes, Robair starts producing a weird rubbery scrape, followed by uneasy squeals which are enough to put your teeth on edge. These sounds return a few minutes later, complemented by a strained wheezing – a sound familiar to anyone who has ever tried to go a for a jog round their local park after a heavy night on the sauce – before things cut to a lovely purring duet, Butcher’s ruffled tone and a low feedback-like whine from Robair.
After this, it’s full tilt towards the end, with a crazily high-pitched ocarina squeal dissolving into a final, frantic fanfare of chirps and parps accompanied by what sounds like a shortwave radio hiss and whine.
Thrillingly out-there stuff. Get it while it’s hot.

FREE JAZZ BLOG - Colin Green

Bottle Breaking Heart Leap

John Butcher dislikes the term “extended technique” – a phrase that appears regularly in our reviews – as it suggests a hierarchy which for him, doesn’t exist. His exploration of the soprano and tenor saxophones has produced a vocabulary in which there is no meaningful distinction between a standard and extended means of producing sounds: they are all as one. His starting point is not notes but sonorities, and not just those of the saxophone but of the space in which he’s performing. He prefers not to know what that acoustic is where possible, and to discover its resonant frequencies and peculiarities while playing. In his solo work, the result is a cycle of vibrations encompassing ear, breath, instrument and acoustic, heard as a constantly renewed feedback of sound.

Things are rather different when he performs with others. According to Butcher, he’ll play with anyone once and see where it goes, but there are about fifty musicians with whom he feels he can play sympathetically. One of these is Gino Robair, with whom he’s performed often as a duo, in trios, and as part of larger ensembles. Robair takes a similarly broad view of percussion. In this performance – recorded in May 2012 at Left Bank, Leeds (a former Church) – in addition to drums, bells and cymbals, sounds are produced by mechanical vibration: the “energised surfaces” Robair is credited with playing, as well as a Blippoo Box. Butcher plays tenor and soprano (acoustic and amplified).
In a number of respects, listening to this album is a matter of what not to do. It’s tempting to identify who’s playing what and to think in terms of a duo. Is that a cymbal overtone, electronic whine or saxophone harmonic, or possibly all three merging into each other, maybe just feedback; was that staccato burst drums or Butcher’s use of plosives? Tempting, but probably fruitless, as it cuts across what’s actually going on. Whereas the distinctive character, phrasing and timbre of a musician often informs his or her contribution, in this performance musical personality is suppressed in favour of the overall aural landscape. It’s the sounds which count, not who’s playing them or how they’re produced.

There’s no denying that for some, this is all decidedly outré. There are no tunes or motifs, not much that could be described as dialogue, and no musical progression in the conventional sense (perhaps, not in any sense). As is often the case with improvisation, we’re required to adjust how we listen and our expectations as to what’s going on. A more profitable way of appreciating this is not to apply familiar musical categories, but to think in terms of contrasting and sympathetic movements and gestures, or different surfaces – rough, translucent, reflective, shattered. This is not to say that the function of the music is to conjure up a succession of mental images – ultimately, it’s about what we hear (and feel) rather than see, even with our mind’s eye – but it provides some understanding of the aesthetic at play, which requires considerable discipline and focussed listening by both musicians and audience.

NEW YORK CITY JAZZ RECORD - Stuart Broomer

SCRUTABLES

English saxophonist John Butcher may be among the world's most influential musicians, operating at the cutting-edge of improvisatory practice since the '80s. While his explorations of multiphonics, continuous breathing and electronics have extended the range of sonic and expressive possibilities for free-improvising saxophonists, he's also served as a model for a host of other instrumentalists. Whenever an acoustic musician starts to sound like a bank of oscillators, a tropical forest, a brook or an insect factory, Butcher's influence is likely nearby.

Scrutables, recorded in 2000, is a work of classic British free improvisation, if "classic" can be applied to the kind of sonic mayhem practiced regularly by Butcher, the late guitarist Derek Bailey and percussionist Gino Robair, whose instrument here is described as "energized surfaces". The interactive mechanics of every genuine improvisation are unique, an incalculable intersection of habit, synapse, randomness, extrasensory perception and listening that ranges from microscopically detailed to non- existent. At any moment it might sound as if each musician is creating his own continuum or as if each is responding to the infinite nuances of the others. Either way, the lines and sounds continuously interact in a scattershot effect that has a line moving from guitar to drum to saxophone and back again.

One may hear more here by surrendering the idea of instrumental identity, accepting the music as one might the words assigned to the segments - as previously non-existent ("almosthenics"), rare ("frangible"), or a happy collision ("cosmetic halo" or "teasing needles").

POINT OF DEPARTURE - Bill Shoemaker

SCRUTABLES

By virtue of its instrumentation mirroring that of the archetypal Topography of the Lungs, Scrutables is a viable measure of how the priorities of improvised music had evolved in the intervening 30 years. By 2000, improvised music was no longer a push-back against Americentric free jazz, its sovereignty having long been recognized. The role of energy had been refined; once a constant source of heat, it now provided light in a more tactical manner. And, most importantly, the advents of Bailey and his contemporaries had shaped the aesthetics of a generation of improvisers who were creating new international networks, a process exemplified by the collaborations of the saxophonist and the Bay Area-based percussionist.

By the time of this studio session, Butcher and Robair had established a working trio with the late bassist Matthew Sperry and had worked in ad hoc settings deserving of working band commitment - particularly the trio with electronicist Tim Perkis documented on Robair's compilation, Buddy Systems: selected duos and trios (Meniscus). They were touring the UK as a duo, playing Liverpool the night before their session with Bailey (try finding Liverpool (Bluecoat) Concert, issued by Limited Sedition in an edition of 241 CD-Rs). Therefore, the right chemistry of familiarity, anticipation and fatigue was in play, the latter being an underappreciated precursor.

Throughout the album, the trio balanced otherworldly sounds and athletic movement, "Teasing Needles" being a case in point of how they accelerated iridescent washes of bowed and rubbed surfaces, pedaled harmonics and soprano multiphonics to an endorphin-producing pace. When the velocity of their exchanges is most ferocious, the trio's abilities to produce sounds well outside the normal parameters of their respective instruments make identifying individual sounds treacherously difficult.

Repeatedly, Scrutables leaves one with the sense that the sound of breaking glass has been replaced with the sound of splitting atoms.

PARIS TRANSATLANTIC - Jason Bivins

SCRUTABLES

It's so fantastic to have new Bailey to listen to, not least this fascinating document from 2000 where the sorely missed guitarist met up with saxophonist Butcher and percussionist Robair (here on "energized surfaces") in London. From a period of fascinating transition in Butcher's own instrumental language, the contrast between the three voices is a rich one. Robair is often heard working low toms like timpani, manipulating the drumheads to create crisp pitch alterations. But he's also given to generating a fascinating low analog rumble as Butcher and Bailey string out modes of sustain on several of the pieces here. When Robair is relatively assertive with this sound, the music becomes a floating electronic atmosphere on some alien planet, occasionally (as on "3") with all three players simultaneously creating wow-wow effects like a generator, an oscillator, a forge.

I'm often most compelled by the more contrapuntal passages here, as with the chirping, choppy, squeaking "2," which is amazingly fast, fluid, and conversational, like sonic floriculture. They occasionally veer off into different areas, as with the industrial skronk, quaver and grind on "5" or the closing "8," which is like Arnold Dreyblatt's excited strings plus gongs and cymbals. But the finest tracks by far are those that synthesize all the approaches heard separately elsewhere on the record. The lengthy "6" finds Butcher exploring some of his most histrionic, vocalic effects as Robair goes for the tiniest, high-end bowed styro effects as Bailey chords away no-wave style. They patiently allow the contrast to develop until the piece sounds as if it simply springs apart from internal tension, as Butcher skirls dervish-like on soprano before a spacious, ominous patter begins and the music moves into the sub-layer, proceeding via almost unconscious hints. "7" picks up on from here, but Butcher now combines his burrs and trills with a mighty yawping, and Robair's thudding, occasional punctuations break things down quite interestingly (he's just so deft in changing it up to generate a slur or groan too, aside from conventional percussive gestures)

Overall, this is a killer disc that reminds you of how bracing and inventive top level improvisation can be, with so much information and so many ideas packed into succinct pieces.

JAZZ WORD - Ken Waxman

SCRUTABLES

A hitherto unreleased session now made more audible through modern technology, this CD captures the unmistakable spiky playing of the late British guitarist Derek Bailey in cohesive improvisations alongside London saxophonist John Butcher, with whom he often played at the time, and visiting American percussionist Gino Robair. More crucially it’s a valuable addition to the guitarist’s burgeoning discography. By this point the playing of Bailey (1930-2005) was very much sui generis. Having along with others, mid-wifed the growth of self-defined improvised music in the United Kingdom, his tart and acerbic method of string scraping and finger-picking had retained constant whether playing with older associates or newer musicians world-wide.
As open to multiple pairings and new partners as Bailey, Butcher had by this time (2000), perfected soprano and tenor saxophone multiphonics making his tones as distinctive as the guitarist’s. Rather than being odd man out, Bay area percussionist Robair, whose rhythmic versatility is expressed by labelling his percussion instruments energized surfaces, had already set up a playing relationship with Butcher. But this is his only recorded meeting with Bailey.

Bailey’s insistence on what could be termed total improvisation notwithstanding, the eight tracks don’t suffer from hesitancy on anyone’s part, with the juddering mass often depending as much of the percussionist’s wrenching textures, cymbal scrapes and patterns as the saxophonist’s diaphragm vibrato, tongue stops and circular breathed split tones. No surprise. Robair had already worked with quirky guitarists like Myles Boisen and mercurial saxophonists like Anthony Braxton; Butcher’s associates had included guitarist John Russell and drummer John Stevens; while Bailey had played with nearly every major percussionist and reedist in Free Music including Evan Parker, Peter Boltzmann, Han Bennink and Tony Oxley.

“Frangible” the lengthiest track is probably almost the most characteristic. Built up with circling single notes from Bailey, high-pitched reed squeaks and extensive percussion friction, stressed textures are invested with more urgency as Butcher’s hollowed respiration swells to corkscrewed tongue flutters and chirps alongside Bailey’s rugged slurred fingering and Robair’s roll, pops and paradiddles. Just when the sonic tension seems impenetrable, vibrated reed obbligatos and descending string flanges cut through the impasse and are soon joined by percussive impulses segmented among paper ripping, cymbal smacking and drum surface crackling. Approximations of rhythm guitar strokes, without a standard pulse, as well as cymbal pops and on “Plugh” an understated, reed-blowing ostinato, keep many of sounds on the other tracks together, even approximating harmony at some points.
Still, the true value of this session is to expose the first-class music produced by three improvisers at the top of their respective games. It’s a valuable addition to each man’s catalogue.

ALL ABOUT JAZZ - John Eyles

APOPHENIA

The partnership of John Butcher and Gino Robair dates back to 1997, their first joint release appearing soon after. It is some years since they released their last duo recording — New Oakland Burr — but Robair was part of Butcher's seven-piece group, which recorded "somethingtobesaid" at the Huddersfield Festival in 2008. Now comes Apophenia, a radio recording originating from KFJC, California, in October 2009. That source may explain its relative brevity — it just tops twenty-eight minutes. It also explains the high quality of the recording which consistently captures every nuance of each player.
On New Oakland Burr, the pair used extended techniques plus electronics and assorted items to good effect, producing soundscapes that did not obviously originate from saxophone and drums. On Apophenia, they build on that, with Butcher using motors with his saxophones and Robair credited with "energized surfaces." Further investigation has revealed that the "motors" in question were borrowed from Robair and are vibrating rubber-coated items that resemble sex toys. Butcher inserts them into the bell of his saxophone and says that they vibrate the air inside without him having to blow through the reed, and the pitch of the note can be varied by normal fingering of the keys. Robair energizes the surfaces of his drums or other objects using such motors, other electric vibrators, a saxophone mouthpiece or even drum sticks—but rarely by actually striking them.

The album opens with sounds that are not immediately identifiable as sax or drums, some obviously being motorized vibrations, interspersed with other breathier tones that close inspection suggests are from Butcher. Although individual sounds are occasionally attributable to sax or a vibrated surface, altogether it seems best not to question the source of each individual sound but to enjoy the whole sound collage that they create, an effective mix in which contrasting tones and textures overlap and complement one another.
On "Fainéant," there is a shift in the soundscape, with more recognizable sax and drum sounds. The two interact more, engaging in back-and-forth call-and-response, working well together. For the last three minutes of its nearly nine minutes, they very effectively play overlapping tones, with Robair constantly vibrating a drum head and Butcher sustaining notes. "Jirble" opens with darker low frequency tones from each player which evolve slowly and intensify until a resounding silence followed by struck metallic tones from Robair signal a switch to a new direction characterized by the ringing sound of bowed metal. On the closer, "Camorra," Butcher again employs the motors. The roles of percussion and saxophone effectively become interchangeable and the piece could well be mistaken for a percussion duo.