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.

JAZZ REVIEW - Barry Witherden

Vortices & Angels

On Vortices And Angels Butcher duets with Bailey on the first two tracks, recorded at North London's Vortex club, and with Davies on the other three tracks, also recorded live, but this time at a church in West London.
In recent years we've heard Bailey in some unexpected contexts on albums like The Last Wave, Mirakle and Guitar, Drums 'n' Bass, so that there is something almost comforting about his continued involvement with this kind of session, in what can now qualify, I guess, as mainstream improv.
For the later generations of free music practitioners, playing with Bailey must be analogous to an astronomer finding a video of the Big Bang: logic suggests there must have been something there before, but there's no concrete evidence of what it was, the appearance of the Joseph Holbrooke 1965 'single' notwithstanding. Bailey's style has no detritus carried over from the other side. He seems to have sprung full-arm'd from his own head.
That doesn't faze Butcher, though. His encounters with Bailey remind me of Roger Corman's The Raven - which, of course, bore no relation to the Poe poem. In the climactic scene Karloff and Price, playing rival wizards, engage in a spell-casting duel.
With their shape-shifting sounds, their flashing, sly, eccentric gestures, Butcher or Bailey might at any moment transform the other (or himself, for that matter) into something scary, wondrous or just plain bizarre.

The Davies/Butcher tracks, as befits their setting perhaps, are less mischievously Mephistopholean and percussive. Etiolated sounds circle and swoop in the stratosphere, or dart down to chatter in tongues. Davies sometimes resorts to a bowed bell, but mostly he sticks to conventional harp, albeit with some unconventional accessories. The duo's dexterity and inventiveness make it difficult to believe that there are only two players. They frequently fool the ear into hearing the shades of other instruments, and there is always, rather paradoxically given that this is 'free music', a strong sense of a fitting resolution when the pieces conclude.

CADENCE - Michael Rosenstein

Vortices & Angels

In listening to improvised music at the start of the 21st century, it has become an easy trap to neatly categorize things by finding precedents. Terms like post-bop, post-Ayler, and post-Parker (Charlie or Evan) are bandied about as convenient means to describe a lineage or provide a pedigree. But there are musicians like John Butcher who come along and confound all attempts at this type of labeling.

Butcher is as likely to participate in collective, spontaneous improvisation as he is in contexts involving composition (whether as part of the long-standing Chris Burn Ensemble or the London Improvisers Orchestra). His partners include many with whom he has had long-term relationships like Burn, John Russell, or Phil Durrant and spontaneous meetings (like a jaw-dropping performance with Joe Morris in Boston in the winter of 2000.)

Luckily, Butcher is fairly prolific in his recordings, offering an opportunity to hear him in an almost dizzying array of contexts. An area he seems to particularly thrive in is the intimacy of both solo and duet settings. On the recent CD Fixations (14), the Emanem label documented a series of live solos Butcher performed between 1997 and 2000. The release at hand provides an intriguing companion to that one. as it captures the reed player in two live duets; one with guitarist Derek Bailey and the other with harpist Rhodri Davies.

There is always a certain directness to improvisations when Derek Bailey is involved. The guitarist has honed a sound and strategy to improvisation that is at once tightly focused and instantly recognizable while remaining remarkably open to a broad variety of contexts for collective exploration. The two pieces here comprise the second set of a performance Butcher and Bailey performed at the Vortex, a club in north London. Bailey's angular, clipped freedom elicits a fluid, rapid-fire response from the reed player.
Butcher's playing is full of rough-scrubbed textures and sharp-edged attack used to spray cascading lines punctuated with carefully wrought spaces and quiet, fluttering ebbs. There is plenty of careful listening going on as the two charge headlong into these extended improvisations that build to a heated intensity.

The pieces with harpist Rhodri Davies have the same intensity and abstraction, but instead of heated, conversational linearity, the improvisations seem to hover in the atmosphere, exciting the air like charged particles. Recorded in a church in west London, the acoustics of the space seem to act almost as a third player here. In Davies' hands, the harp becomes a new instrument full of phenomenal timbral range. Skittering plucked lines are combined with scraped harmonics, bent and stretched notes, and percussive, resonating sheets of metallic reverberation. Butcher responds with spare overtones and harmonics, pinched squeaks, and circular flutters that float like flecked motes in a sunbeam. The improvisations progress with a sense of time that is slowed down, magnifying every tiny nuance and gesture.

This duet release offers two compelling views of Butcher's playing. Utilizing diverse strategies for spontaneous improvisations, both deliver equally engaging results.

E-PULSE - Tony Mostrom

Vortices & Angels

VORTICES AND ANGELS is an absolute standout in Emanem's catalogue. The Butcher-Baileys, recorded live in a small London jazz club (!) have a dry sound quality that fits the breathiness of Butcher's putt-putt duck quacks, quick trills and long drones on the soprano (aah!), cutting at angles through Bailey's choppy scales and chords, flinty amplified harmonics and violent, craggy metallic timbre contrasts. It's all very angular, spiky and at times flat-out noisy (especially good if you hate your neighbours).

When the CD's second part gets under way, it's a whole different thing. 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.

If you haven't yet heard John Butcher, take it from your old pal who generally finds the sax to be a dull, uninteresting instrument: he is one of the few true individual players thereof who are working today, with a tone on both the tenor and soprano that are like no one else's a rare thing at this late date. I think the three pieces by this duo would fascinate just about anyone with well-cultivated ears. Fifty stars.

OPPROBRIUM - Dean Roberts

Trio Playing

Speaking as someone turned on to the man by Aida and his duets with Braxton (which, as anyone knows, profess passion and singularity like nothing else in the audible sphere), congeniality in Bailey's improvisation seems far gone, and this work is a demonstration of the further fracturing of his already highly abstract approach.
The rawness of this recording adds a beautifully voyeuristic dimension, and captures a lack of inhibition from the three performers involved. Leaping and fiery harmonics swell and dart about each other ad nauseam, with the conglomeration of Marshall's tuba and Butcher's soprano (and later tenor) lasting a good few minutes until Derek's volume pedal releases the smoky burnt-out electric tone that's been stifled inside the dusty volume pot for too many releases, erupting in a breathy cloud which lays a hazy skyline of feedback over the whole session.
As far as improvisations with obscure makeup go, you could do a lot worse (like a 2CD of bagpipe duets), though I'd have to say the candidness of it all makes it one for enthusiasts.
This judgement begs the question - what is the definitive document of Bailey's approach? I'd have to say all of his recordings rather than just one. Further evidence that his realisations are in a constant flux that is quite stunning to behold.

CADENCE - Walter Horn

Trio Playing

On first hearing I thought Trio Playing might have been a recording with one simple concept: "Remember mates, just random clicks, hisses and scratches. We don't want listeners to be able to tell if any particular sound is coming from the recording or from the radiators". But repeated listening gives the lie to this shallow interpretion.
Butcher is a very fine saxophonist, capable of beautiful, if rarefied, flights of imagination. He clearly has his own vision and it's an intelligent and serene one. Marshall is a somewhat more conventional player than his partners here, though he is not averse to the burble, belch or hiss. It's not the pitches or sounds he produces, but his propensitiy to engage in call-and-response rather than do his own thing, that puts him more in the Jazz tradition than Butcher or Bailey.

Bailey thrives when put in contexts of this sort. Butcher softly flutters, Marshall replies in a different language, say with breathy, slowly ascending quarter notes, and Bailey comments tellingly, like a BBC analyst at a United Nations debate between Iceland and Cameroon. And when they all resolve their differences and make nice, as during the exquisite chorale at the end of Room for Breath, the result is downright beautiful.