Tuesday 21 February 2017, 7.30pm
“Released by the Erstwhile label, Matterings – last year’s collaboration between sound artist Jeph Jerman and percussionist Tim Barnes – didn’t receive the critical attention it deserved... On the duo’s follow up album, Versatile Ambience, Jerman and Barnes continue to work in a familiar sonic territory – one similarly occupied by other contemporary tape music composers like Graham Lambkin – but do so with a level of taste and confidence that sets it above many other like-minded records.” – The WIRE
Across a dozen years, the duo of Jeph Jerman and Tim Barnes has offered powerful, minimal music rooted in a shared dedication to the creative act of listening. Jerman is a veteran of the creative music scenes in Denver and Seattle, and in more recent years has been thoroughly investigating the sonic possibilities of the desert Southwest where he lives and works. Tim Barnes’s resume as a percussionist, engineer, and curator is studded with all-star collaborators including Tony Conrad, Sonic Youth, Ken Vandermark (who appears here as a guest), Royal Trux, and Tower Recordings. Versatile Ambience is their second record in as many years, making this one of the most productive periods in the duo’s history.
The pieces on Versatile Ambience highlight the ingenuity and intense physical economy found throughout both artists’ repertoires. What sonic and performative possibilities are held in these few found objects, in this environment? What music is already here? What music is hidden in the subtly shifting motion of a hand? Explicitly or implicitly, Jerman and Barnes have spent their careers asking these questions. The latest answers are found here, in creative percussive and electronic improvisation by the duo, in the minimal but impactful contributions of a handful of guests, and in field recordings ranging from the call of a stranded cricket to the roar of a distant airport. The spoken section (a first for the duo) sounds as though it is a poetics being conceived, written, recorded, and edited as you are hearing it. But if at first it sounds like a cut-up, passages like “and you, the anvil? / I am the hammer!” promise at the very least a Mad Libs-worth of structure and play, and quite a bit more depth.
Despite its appearance so soon after their last effort, this record feels more considered, more complete than any Jerman/Barnes release to date. Like a snake’s path through the sand, if the duo’s trajectory holds, Versatile Ambience will soon be seen as a remarkable point along a fascinatingly meandering line.
Ashley Paul uses an array of instruments including saxophone, clarinet, voice, guitar, bells and percussion, mixing disparate elements to create a colorful palate of sound that works its way into her intuitive songs; free forming, introverted melodies. This blend manifests beautiful and simple musical forms against acoustic experimentation.
Ashley has performed or recorded with Phill Niblock, Rashad Becker, Nik Colk Void, Loren Connors, Heatsick, Aki Onda, C. Spencer Yeh, Anthony Coleman, Bass Clef, Joe Maneri, Joe Morris, Seijiro Murayama, Greg Kelley, Bill Nace and Eli Keszler appearing on such labels as Important, PAN, ESP-DISK’ and Tzadik. She received a Masters of Music from New England Conservatory in 2007.
Mark Wastell is a versatile improvising musician who has played a central role in the British improvised music scene for thirty years. He has performed and recorded extensively and his varied resume includes projects with Derek Bailey, Phil Durrant, John Butcher, Lasse Marhaug, Rhodri Davies, Simon H. Fell, Burkhard Beins, John Tilbury, Mattin, Tony Conrad, Evan Parker, Tim Barnes, Bernhard Günter, Keith Rowe, John Zorn, Peter Kowald, Joachim Nordwall, Otomo Yoshihide, David Toop, Max Eastley, Hugh Davies, Julie Tippetts, Alan Skidmore, Mike Cooper, Chris Abrahams, Stewart Lee, Clive Bell, Arild Andersen, Jan Bang, Erik Honoré, Maggie Nicols, Will Gaines, Charlotte Keeffe, Thomas Lehn, Thurston Moore and David Sylvian.
Born in Brighton and living in London, John Butcher is a saxophonist whose work ranges through improvisation, his own compositions, multi tracked pieces and explorations with feedback, unusual acoustics and non-concert locations. He is well known as a solo performer who attempts to engage with a sense of place. Resonant Spaces, for example, is a collection of performances recorded during a tour of unusual locations in Scotland and the Orkney Islands.
Butcher originally studied Physics, but after publishing a PH.D (1982) on quantum chromodynamics he left academia and took off with music. He has since collaborated with hundreds of artists, some for many decades, including Derek Bailey, Eddie Prévost, Angharad Davies, John Stevens’ Spontaneous Music Ensemble, Okkyung Lee, Andy Moor, Sophie Agnel, Christian Marclay, Pat Thomas, Phil Minton, Rhodri Davies, Tony Buck, Magda Mayas, John Russell, Chris Corsano, Steve Beresford, Ståle Liavik Solberg, and Matthew Shipp.
Additionally he values occasional encounters - with large groups ranging from the WDR Sinfonieorchester (as soloist), and the 20+ piece EX Orkest to duos with Akio Suzuki, Liz Allbee, Keiji Haino, Isabelle Duthois, David Toop, Mariam Rezaei, Fred Frith and Joe McPhee.
Recent compositions include “Fluid Fixations” (an hcmf commission), “Penny Wands” for Futurist Intonarumori, “Good Liquor…” for the London Sinfonietta and “Tarab Cuts” (shortlisted for a British Composer’s Award).
"Over 40 years of sustained performance and publishing, English saxophonist, improvisor and composer John Butcher has shaped much of what soprano and tenor saxophone can do, and what their roles and vocabulary in improvised music might be. I’ve always heard Butcher’s playing as a kind of nose-to-tail saxophony, where the whole instrument from reed-tip to brim of bell is available, accessible and articulate. Few other saxophonists slice as sharply back into the physical history, material (and physics) of the instrument, across its near 200 year history. When Hector Berlioz wrote of his friend Adolphe Sax’s then fresh invention, “the varied beauty of its accent, sometimes serious, sometimes calm, sometimes impassioned, dreamy or melancholic, or vague”, he could have been imagining Butcher's distinctively clean but complex, enquiring soundworld." WIRE - October 2024. The Primer by Seymour Wright
Graham Dunning is self-taught as an artist and musician having studied neither discipline academically. His work explores sound as texture, timbre and something tactile, drawing on bedroom production, tinkering and recycling found objects. He has performed solo and in ensembles across the UK, and Europe, and shown solo sound installations in the UK, New Zealand and USA. He teaches Experimental Sound Art at the Mary Ward Centre in London and also gives various independent workshops. Dunning has released through Entr’acte, Seagrave, Tombed Visions and more.
John Butcher / tenor & soprano saxophones
Mark Wastell / tam tam, singing bowls, chimes
John Butcher and Mark Wastell initially began playing together are part of Chris Burn’s Ensemble in 1997. Numerous collaborations have continued over the years, including that of a short lived duo active between 2008/09. They performed in concert three times together during this period. Tonight will see a long overdue return to their sonic investigations.
