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1 | Meantime | 17:57 |
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2 | One Tree Hill | 20:08 |
| 3 | Flamsteed | 13:14 | |
| 4 | Conduit | 18:36 |
Flawlessly recorded in 2008, this is Eddie Prevost and John Tilbury with guest John Butcher in quiet mood; every tiny sound counts and every shade of timbre has space to make its presence felt.
"The tiniest sound is amplified by intention. Other noises are transformed into counterpoint. The music begins. Tentative suggestions are offered, politely ignored, admonished or not noticed. Serendipitous slips of the wrist are canonised -- pursued by conflagrations and spectacular shell bursts. Momentum is achieved. The music has an energy with which the musicians can wrestle, deflecting its trajectory or being thrown inconsequentially aside. Tempo defied temporality. Logic limps away. As suddenly as the turbulence arose it subsides, hovering portentously, unpredictable and uncontrollable in all those ways a serialist doesn't trust. The musician waits, trying to anticipate and out-think the unthinking but thinkable direction the sounds will take. Construction overtakes the constructionist, who can only nod approvingly as the piers and girders of musical form slot automatically into place. Here is the invisible handshake, enjoined before a motion was ever formulated. The music makes itself -- just as man makes himself. Here are volition, intention, determination tempered by acceptance of eventuality. Here is definition by action. I am what I am because I do what I do, acted upon and acting upon. The sound returns. The contra-bass drum resounds, its deep vibration sympathising with the solar-plexus. The echo grows weaker and richer at the same time, as its lingering residue settles into the crevices of perception. The drummer raises the beater; then slowly and with conscious care withdraws the intention. No more sound is need." - Eddie Prevost
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Eddie Prevost / percussion
John Tilbury / piano
John Butcher / soprano & tenor saxophone
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Recorded at Trinity College of Music, Greenwich, on 13th January 2008 by Sebastian Lexer. Mastered by Sebastian Lexer. Cover 'Lamberton Court' by Andrew Prevost.
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
A founder-member of AMM (1965-2022)
“[Eddie Prévost’s] is one of the greatest metallurgists that music has produced. […] sparks delicately arcing through the air, of slow lava ingesting its surroundings, of the shifting grind of tectonic plates across each other, of the rustle and glint of a firebird darting between shadows, and of ore smashing into the surface of the earth; but perhaps this language is overwrought: all that needs to be remarked upon is Prévost's industry, his diligence.”
Nathan Moore — liner note to AMM’s ‘Indúsria’
Matchless Recordings mrcd105.
But beyond this work Prévost has also maintained a relationship with the jazz drum-kit.
“His free drumming flows superbly making perfect use of his formidable technique, but his most startling feature is his stylelessness. It’s as though there has never been an Elvin Jones or a Max Roach.” - review of a set with saxophonist Lou Gare, Melody Maker (27.03.1975)
“Prévost, meanwhile, was simply miraculous; it was fascinating to watch him and to compare his approach with that of a Kern or a Nilssen-Love. I can only say that he was possessed of an uncanny, burning intentness that navigated the ensemble through passages of stark, sculpted beauty, grave concentration and full-on, bristling energy.”
Blue Tomato, Vienna 2012. In concert with Marilyn Crispell and Harrison Smith. Richard Rees-Jones
“An excellent release from one of the finest percussionists around, jazz or otherwise.” review of Prévost’s solo CD ‘Collider’
Matchless Recordings mrcd106 – Brian Olewnic, Squidsear (2022).
“Relentlessly innovative yet full of swing and fire.” – Morning Star
John Tilbury is renowned for his peerless interpretation of the piano music of Morton Feldman, John Cage, Christian Wolff and Howard Skempton. In addition to the performances and seminal recordings that he has made of these composers’ works, he has been an eloquent advocate of their music in his writing and speaking about them. The same is true of the attention he has paid to the music and ideas of Cornelius Cardew, the subject of his authoritative biography published in 2008, and with whom he played in the legendary improvisation groups the Scratch Orchestra and AMM. In the last ten years John Tilbury has performed a range of plays and prose pieces by Samuel Beckett.
Video by Helen Petts
