"This recording was released in 1984 as an LP with the same title and was unavailable for fifteen odd years. In artistic terms, it was a shocking statement from Phil Minton and Roger Turner which scared a lot of people. Now, years later, the recording sounds as if it has been recorded today. It has not lost any of its artistic qualities and stood the test of time. The work of great originality and integrity."
"Upon its initial LP release, this 1984 improvising session turned more than a few heads. And it would take a fertile imagination for one to reconcile the duo's rendition of Monk's "'Round About Midnight with the original, for example. Armed with boyish enthusiasm, the artists pursue a wanton spirit through their surrealistic game plan. Of course, British freestyle vocalist Phil Minton is a well-known improviser since the advent of this date with his fellow countryman, percussionist Roger Turner. But this recording still resides as an attention-grabbing document." - All About Jazz
Available as 320k MP3 or 16bit FLAC
For a long time now Phil Minton has been working as a improvising singer, solo and in groups and situations at various locations all over the place, deserts, quarries, concert halls, pubs, holes, dodgy clubs, containers, up trees, in prisons, on mountains, in churches, under bridges and cafe oto etc.
Phil Minton comes from Torquay. He played trumpet and sang with the Mike Westbrook Band in the early 60s - Then in dance and rock bands in Europe for the later of part of the decade. He returned to England in 1971, rejoining Westbrook and was involved in many of his projects until the mid 1980′s.
For most of the last forty years, Minton has been working as an improvising singer in lots of groups, orchestras, and situations. Numerous composers have written music especially for his extended vocal techniques. He has a quartet with Veryan Weston, Roger Turner and John Butcher, and ongoing duos, trios and quartets with above and many other musicians, including tours with American singer Audrey Chen - with whom he has sang far and wide in the last ten years.
Since the eighties, His Feral Choir, where he voice-conducts workshops and concerts for anyone who wants to sing, has performed in over twenty countries.
Over decades Roger Turner has brought the renowned volcanic power and finely-honed precision of his drum work to ensembles that have forged substantial connections with musicians both sides of the Atlantic and more recently from Japan. In addition to pioneering an acoustic percussive language that can run in tandem with approaches to contemporary electronic instruments, he has worked extensively in the microscopic laboratory of the acoustic duo situation where he acquired a highly developed sense of detail and of dynamic control. One of that select group of world-class players who have collectively redefined the language of contemporary percussion, in Turner's hands minute inflections of tension can shape the group's musical direction and galvanise a new level of audience experience.
