The Recedents

The Recedents must be one of the longest established improvising units in the UK, having been formed in 1982 as one of the earliest electro-acoustic groups, they have worked together at (sometimes infrequent) intervals ever since. The unique soprano sax sound of Lol Coxhill is at the heart of the group, while post-everything guitarist Mike Cooper plays both acoustically and with electronic interventions. The trio is completed by Roger Turner, one of the most sensitive and responsive percussionists currently active on either side of the Atlantic.



Video by Helen Petts

Mike Cooper

For the past 40 years Mike Cooper has been an international musical explorer, performing and recording, solo and in a number of inspired groupings and a variety of genres. Initially a folk-blues guitarist and singer songwriter his work has diversified to include improvised and electronic music, live music for silent films, radio art and sound installations. He is also a music journalist, writing features for magazines, particularly on Pacific music and musicians, a visual artist, film and video maker, collector of Hawaiian shirts and appears on more than 60 records to date.

"Cooper was forging connections between folk and experimental musics long before America got New or Weird." (The Wire)

Mike Cooper website

Lol Coxhill

"There are very few versatile artists that hold the importance Lol Coxhill has in European improvised music. His highly personal style on soprano and tenor saxophone (fluent, lyrical yet capable of shrieking outbursts), his ability to perform with everyone and in every style, from jazz standards to the weirdest electro-acoustic improv, backed by his enduring sense of humor, all draw the figure of a maverick musician." - François Couture, All Music Guide

"Soprano sax maverick Coxhill is a musician who's touched on nearly every area of music over the past half century. In the '60s he jacked in his day job to accompany soul singers like Rufus Thomas. He'd sit in with bluesmen like Alexis Korner and Champion Jack Dupree. He was signed to John Peel's label Dandelion and played bebop with the likes of Bobby Wellins and Stan Tracey, prog rock with Steve Miller and Kevin Ayers, and dabbled in ska and rocksteady with Rico Rodriquez and Jazz Jamaica. In 1977 he even toured with the Damned.

In the last decade I've seen him play with assorted avant jazzers, drone rockers and electronic mavericks. I've seen him busking near the Thames, and seen his old LPs selling for $100 in New York record shops. And I've also heard him playing beautiful, straight versions of standards....

A true national treasure and a top geezer.' - John Lewis, Time Out

Lol Coxhill website

Roger Turner

Enormously imaginative, Turner has been improvising since the late sixties and honing an intensely personal percussive language that draws on his active involvement in dance and the visual arts. His work has focussed on numerous projects with improvising musicians and groups from Alan Silva’s workshops in the 80s, Toshinori Kondo, Derek Bailey and Konk Pack his trio formed in 1997 with Tim Hodgkinson and Thomas Lehn - a group whose use of volume and sense of detail continues the exploration of an electro-acoustic dynamic that forms one of his main musical concerns.