All About Jazz - Raul d'Gama Rose

DAYLIGHT

There is a visceral energy that drives the music on Daylight and all of this has to do with the wonderful musicality of saxophonist John Butcher and drummer Mark Sanders. From the sense of moist breath that courses through Butcher's horn—as interspersed with breathy growls, guttural smears and sensational squeaks and wails, depending on the emotional prompts of the improvised score—to the primordial echo of Sanders' drums, the music turns a whole palette of colors and hues as it unfolds in all its diaphanous glory. Both musicians find their magical and mystical levels by immersing themselves in the colors of the music as it sings to them in the deepest recesses oftheir minds and hearts. In fact, the dichotomy of nocturnal inspiration unveiling itself dappled by the sun is prescient throughout the record.

Butcher's part in what appears to be an almost continuous score, swirls and darts in and out of the shadows. The saxophonist builds an amorphous structure of sound into which he plunges with tenor and soprano saxophone. Inspired by the tone and timbre of each of the instruments, he twists and turns with the push of every key. There are times when his playing imitates the very breath of life as it drives the pulsations of the human body. This becomes an even more glorious artistic pursuit when Butcher adds subtle shades and sometimes even riotous color to the shrieks and growls and speech-like notes that fly out of the bells of his woodwinds. These are sometimes repeated and, as this is done, the notes turn numerous shades of the color that the tonal center of each note presents.

Sanders is a percussionist colorist in his own right. He starts by finding the pulse of the music and setting the framework of the musical fibrillation. This is a constantly shifting meter sometimes dictated by where Butcher has taken the music; at other times where Sanders and his drums are vibrating. Depending on whether he is using sticks, mallets or brushes, Sanders' music dwells in a state of constantly changing colors. His brassy swishes on cymbals create bright gold auras within which the music propels itself onward and upward, simulating the ebb and swell of titanic waves lapping at the feet of the saxophonist, who responds with brilliant shimmering hues of his own.

As a duo the saxophonist and the percussionist are both joined at the hip as well as float and dance freely around each other. Their music is as much an audio sojourn as it is a visual delight in the fourth dimension of the soul. What it does is create the imagery of two free-floating musicians dancing around each other like the proverbial double-helix, at times, but also more often than not in a kind of freedom dance that can only come when two musical souls are so united that amorphous music they create becomes the fascinating dance of the very light of life itself.

All About Jazz - John Eyles

TREADER DUOS

These three contrasting reeds/drums duos are a fine record of the concert at which they were recorded, in February 2008 at St Giles-in-the-Fields church, London. The three tracks give an opportunity to hear some fine improvisers as well as to compare their differing approaches to the combination of reeds and drums.

The album opens with John Butcher and Mark Sanders already sounding warmed-up and tuned into each other. Sanders lays down a delicate pattern of cymbals alongside which Butcher's tenor constructs a full-bodied, melodic solo. As the drums become more assertive, the sax replies in kind and the two match each other every step of the way. Throughout, there is ebb and flow between sax and drums with no leader or follower but the two combining to keep up a compelling forward momentum. With close listening, one can hear Butcher subtly shifting the quality of his horn by altering his embouchure or by use of his tongue, but such technical shifts are so well integrated into his whole performance that they largely pass unnoticed. Across the piece, the pair displays a well- judged sense of dynamics, bringing it to a suitably dramatic climax.

Next up is the very different combination of Alex Ward on clarinet and Roger Turner on drums. Both are seasoned improvisers, with Ward these days as comfortable on guitar as on clarinet. Here, as with his guitar playing, he sounds as if he has soaked up clarinet influences and integrated them into his own eclectic personal style. The pair begins with a flurry of activity that borders on hyperactive before settling into a more relaxed mood. Ward uses a range of extended techniques, including removing the mouthpiece and playing it alone. In typical fashion, Turner is a hive of activity, but the restraint of his playing belies the energy he invests in it. The end results are a model of good taste. A sample of this duo's interaction is shown in the clip below, recorded by Helen Petts at this actual concert.

By way of contrast, John Tchicai opens with some vocal ululations leading into a call and response between his voice and saxophone, the mellow sound of his tenor sax complementing the voice well. Tony Marsh's drumming provides understated support without stealing the spotlight from Tchicai. When Marsh is given his own space, he delivers a well-constructed solo. As a pairing, this duo gets closer to free jazz than either of the other two. Tchicai's introduction of bass clarinet in the finale provides a welcome contrast to sax and brings the album to a satisfying end.

WIRE - Daniel Spicer

TARAB CUTS

The active ingredients in these two performances are sound files created by John Butcher using pre-Second World War 78s belonging to Kamal Kassar, a Lebanese vinyl fanatic renowned for owning the largest collection of classical Arabic music in the world.
In “Between The Skies”, clipped snippets of oud, flute and ney act as bookmarks, separating and contextualising Butcher’s closely controlled solo saxophone statements. There’s a lithe, serpentine dance and an intense, spiralling circular breathing exercise, both on soprano, and a curt tenor commentary that ends up quacking all over a rhythmic loop like a Middle Eastern take on Terry Riley’s Music For The Gift.
On the flipside, “Under The Walls” foregrounds drummer Mark Sanders, as he veers from floating free play to some funky brushwork accompanying a sepia- tinged recording of a female vocalist. Not just a ghostly meditation on nostalgia and the ephemeral nature of culture, it’s alsoa carefully constructed investigation into the Arab concept of tarab, the merging of music and emotional transformation.