Double CD launch celebration.

John Butcher - Resonant Spaces (confront 17) - The recordings on this disc were made as part of Arika's Resonant Spaces event, a touring project that we ran in summer 2006. Visiting spaces which displayed extreme acoustic properties we asked John Butcher (and sound artist Akio Suzuki) to be informed by the acoustic space they found themselves in. Around the more remote corners of Scotland we presented performances in sites with specific acoustic properties: standing stone circles, a WWII military fuel storage tank, a sea cave, an ice-house, an abandoned reservoir and a mausoleum. (Barry Esson, Arika)

Lee Patterson / Graham Halliwell - Terrain (confront ccs 8) - "Terrain", a collaboration with Lee Patterson, comprises of multi-layered saxophone, amplified objects and field recordings. The four pieces are the result of a week long field and studio recording session in North Norfolk, Summer 2006, and will be released on Confront Collectors Series, December 2008. With reference to the title, each piece occupies a no man's land between composition and improvisation.

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JOHN BUTCHER - SOLO SAXOPHONES

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LEE PATTERSON - AMPLIFIED OBJECTS
GRAHAM HALLIWELL - SOFTWARE BASED SAXOPHONE FEEDBACK AND ELECTRONICS

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RHODRI DAVIES - ELECTRIC HARP
MARK WASTELL - TAM TAM, ELECTRONICS

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Rhodri Davies
Rhodri Davies has been engaged with improvised music for over ten years, he plays harp, electric harp, live electronics and builds wind, water and fire harp installations. His regular groups include Branches, a duo with John Butcher, Broken Consort, Common Objects, Cranc, Portable, Apartment House, Branches, The Sealed Knot and a trio with David Toop and Lee Patterson. In 2008 he collaborated with visual artist Gustav Metzger on ŒSelf-Cancellation‚, a large-scale audio-visual collaboration in London and Glasgow. He also performs and researches contemporary music. He has commissioned new works for the harp by: Carole Finer, Catherine Kontz, Michael Parsons, Tim Parkinson, Ben Patterson, Mieko Shiomi and Yasunao Tone. www.rhodridavies.com

Lee Patterson
Encompassing various forms, including improvised music, field recording, film soundtrack, sound installation and radio broadcast, Lee Pattersons‚ work is characterised by the revelation of subliminal or barely audible sounds. Utilising commonplace materials and invented methodologies, his practice aims toward a new understanding of his surroundings through altering perceptions of everyday reality. His unorthodox and idiosyncratic approaches to generating sound have led to collaborations with a host of international artists and experimental musicians.

Graham Halliwell
Recent recording and performance collaborations have involved Bernhard Gunter, Steve Roden, Max Eastley, Evan Parker, Keith Rowe, Thomas Korber, Rhodri Davies, Mark Wastell and Lee Patterson. "when those hairs stand up you know you are on to something good" said Dan Warburton, amongst other things, of Halliwell's music in Wire magazine.

John Butcher
John Butcher's music ranges through free improvisation, composition, multitracked saxophone pieces and work with live electronics, amplification and feedback. He is well known as a solo performer, recently exploiting extreme acoustics, and has composed pieces for Chris Burn's Ensemble, Polwechsel, the Elision Ensemble and the Rova Saxophone Quartet. He started playing the saxophone whilst studying physics, but, after finishing a doctorate on quantum chromodynamics he left academia in 1982 and went off with music - working with Burn, John Russell, Phil Durrant, Paul Lovens and Radu Malfatti. In the early '90s he joined what became the final version of John Stevens' Spontaneous Music Ensemble and also began playing with Derek Bailey and Phil Minton. Electronic music was an early influence on his approach to saxophone playing, and became explicit in his electromanipulation duo with Durrant, and, more recently, in duos with Christof Kurzmann and Toshimaru Nakamura. Some current projects include Thermal with EX guitarist Andy Moor & Thomas Lehn, The Contest of Pleasures with Axel Doerner and Xavier Charles, and duos with Steve Beresford, Gerry Hemingway, Rhodri Davies, Paal Nilssen-Love, Gino Robair, John Edwards and Eddie Prevost. Butcher continues to play in many occasional, sometimes just one-off encounters - ranging from large groups such as Butch Morris' London Skyscraper, Radu Malfatti's Orkestra and the EX Orkestra, to duo concerts with Fred Frith, Akio Suzuki, and Otomo Yoshihide.

www.johnbutcher.org.uk

Mark Wastell
London-based sound artist and composer Mark Wastell builds enormous atmospheres on the Tam Tam with very little actual movement. Wastell‚s music is dark, deep and beautiful. Slow movements build up sonic pulses that are able to take over rooms and buildings. He is currently focusing on four main projects; solo performances, Oceans of Silver and Blood with Joachim Nordwall, duo with John Butcher and a quartet with Evan Parker, Graham Halliwell and Max Eastley.