John Coxon - electric guitar and prepared piano
Evan Parker - tenor saxophone
Eddie Prévost - percussion
1. Cinema - 54:53
Recorded by Tom Bugs live at The Cube, Bristol on 8 March 2008
Mixed by Rick Campion at City University Music Studios
Mastered by Rupert Clervaux at Gray's Inn Road
Many thanks to Mark & Chiz (Qu Junktions) and all at The Cube
Artwork by James Vickery
Music by John Coxon, Evan Parker and Eddie Prévost
Diverse musical elements - coruscating cymbal scrapes, shimmering amplifier hum, melancholy saxophone circlings, sharp hits of snare, string and reed, slow motion guitar riffs, deep tam-tam surges and floor tom rasps, hypnotic prepared piano figures, and hovering fragments of song-like melodies - fracture and coalesce in this single intense improvisation.
Featuring two of the foundational figures of free improvisation alongside a younger arrival, this recording captures the first meeting of this trio. They had all played together before separately, and the combination of familiarity and unfamiliarity proved productive: there's plenty of divergence and convergence here, and plenty of tension too - most interestingly, perhaps, in their differing approaches to repetition and tonality. At times coming uncomfortably close to each other, at times standing far apart, the trio moves inexorably towards a beautiful - and, in its simplicity, startling - conclusion.
Numbered edition of 500 CDs
350gsm card outer cover
150gsm paper inner cover
Monochrome risograph print
John Butcher - soprano and tenor saxophones
Matthew Shipp - piano
1. curling / charred (tenor solo) - 8:51
2. mud / hiss (soprano solo) - 8:25
3. fundamental field (piano solo) - 14:51
4. generative grammar (duo) - 29:14
Recorded by Sebastian Lexer live at Cafe Oto, London on 14 February 2010
Concert broadcast on BBC Radio 3's "Jazz on 3", a Somethin' Else production
Special thanks to producer Peggy Sutton and to Hamish Dunbar at Cafe Oto
Mixed by John Butcher
Mastered by Rupert Clervaux at Gray's Inn Road
Artwork by Mark Spelman
Music by John Butcher (1, 2 & 4) and Matthew Shipp (3 & 4)
The first meeting of two masters of improvised music. Concentrated solo pieces from each before an uncompromising duo.
When Matthew Shipp was invited to London's Cafe Oto for a residency in 2010 he immediately asked to play with John Butcher, perhaps not the most obvious choice of collaborator but one that proved inspired. Although they generally work in very different areas of improvised music, both players share an intensity of focus and pugnacious individualism that heightened rather than hindered their ability to work together. This is not a polite meeting in the middle but a genuine synthesis in which both remain resolutely themselves but both are transformed.
The concert was recorded for broadcast on Jazz on 3. For this CD edition, the recording has been meticulously re-mixed by John Butcher and expertly mastered by Rupert Clervaux to bring out the full physical force of the performance.
Available on CD or 24-bit FLAC
Numbered edition of 500 CDs
350gsm card outer cover
150gsm paper inner cover
Four colour risograph print
"This is an adventure in consciousness in which two musicians of the very first order explore the resemblance in their instrumental voices, a resemblance that they explore by attacking it." - Stuart Broomer, Point of Departure
"Un grand moment d'improvisation libre, organique, viscéral, puissant, créatif et sans concession, qui redonne de la fraîcheur et de la vigueur à cette musique. Recommandé." - Julien Héraud, improv sphere
"Evolving, living, breathing, fighting, fucking, creating: this is as far from petrification as it is possible to get." - Scott McMillan, The Liminal
"Thrilling stuff, but far more than just thrills—including rhythmic sophistication, rich melodic invention and empathetic interplay. A duo to cherish." - John Eyles, All About Jazz
"There are those round these parts who posit that free improvisation is a cerebral, sexless art, arguments that are annihilated by the rough structural and timbral shag of this music." - Philip Clark, The Wire
John Edwards - double bass
Okkyung Lee - cello
1. WCBW I - 10:49
2. WCBW II - 11:06
3. WCBW III - 9:47
4. WCBW IV - 5:44
5. WCBW V - 8:57
A stunning series of duo improvisations from two of the world's finest string players, whose shared dynamism and intensity of purpose produces fluid, powerful music that ranges from dense viscosity to swift effervescence.
With all-strings improvisation there's often a danger of pseudo-classicism, of sounding vaguely like modernist chamber music, replete with refined flourishes and familiar motifs. Edwards and Lee don't just avoid this but go nowhere near it, heading off in another direction entirely.
White Cable, Black Wires is full of rude vitality, driven by an intensely physical interplay which encompasses growling blocks of noise, subtle melodies, and nimble rhythmic entanglements.
Recorded by Sebastian Lexer at The Welsh Chapel, London on 25 May 2011
Mixed by John Edwards
Mastered by Rupert Clervaux at Gray’s Inn Road
Music by John Edwards (PRS) & Okkyung Lee (ASCAP)
"I can't quite think of anyone else who sounds quite like this: it is in a class of its own." - Bruce Lee Gallanter, Downtown Music Gallery
"Thomas runs the gamut of techniques, splashing clusters, weaving contrapuntal lines and building elaborate structures from the inside out. Despite their variety, they share a fundamental quality – they truly sound like spur of the moment creations, not the final draft of ideas mulled over for weeks, if not months on end. Their impact is enhanced by one of the more effectively engineered piano sounds in recent memory, one that puts the piano right in your lap. The value of this is felt immediately, as the first variation is brimming with above-the-staves clusters that are wincingly bright. Conversely, Thomas creates china-rattling thunder when he plunges into the bass register." - Bill Shoemaker, Point of Departure
"Une démonstration de force vraiment créative, intense, profonde et encore organique. Conseillé à tous les amateurs de piano." - Julien Héraud, improv sphere
Pat Thomas - piano
1. Variation 1 - 4:16
2. Variation 2 - 4:55
3. Variation 3 - 7:34
4. Variation 4 - 8:06
5. Variation 5 - 5:04
6. Variation 6 - 1:28
7. Variation 7 - 6:13
8. Variation 8 - 4:55
9. Variation 9 - 5:47
10. Variation 10 - 1:57
Recorded by Rick Campion at City University Music Studios on 19 June 2011
Mixed by Rick Campion
Mastered by Rupert Clervaux at Gray's Inn Road
Artwork from a 15th century Mamluk tile, adapted for print by Paul Abbott
Music by Pat Thomas (PRS)
A major solo statement, Al-Khwarizmi Variations traverses the history and the physicality of the piano.
Working both inside and outside the instrument's body, at times playing with recognisable musical material, at others going deep into sonic abstraction, Pat Thomas presents a compelling vision of what the piano can do in the 21st century.
Extremes entwine in his playing: solidity and flow; seriousness and laughter; uproar and imperturbability.
1. Stonecipher I 33:17
2. Stonecipher II 14:09
Axel Dörner trumpet, electronics
Mark Sanders drums, percussion
A deeply enigmatic duo of trumpet and drums augmented by live electronics and an expanded percussive array (tam-tam, multiple high hats etc.), Stonecipher is a mesmerising work that operates in the blurred regions between the electronic and acoustic.
Dörner's electronics have never been more effective, creating viscous clouds of sound which are illuminated by Sanders' sparse, precise formations, producing a dense fabric of insidious extended tones, gradual inclines and sudden drops, and sounds that slowly fold back into themselves or abruptly open onto unexpected plateaus.
There's something beguilingly unhurried about the way that Stonecipher develops, but there's a real quickness bubbling under this apparent slowness that prevents the music from ever completely solidifying: just when you think you're on firm ground something moves and the whole landscape is reshaped.
Recorded by Rick Campion on 19 June 2011 at City University Music Studios
Mixed by Axel Dörner
Artwork by Jane Millican (detail of Scene, 2010, pencil on paper)
Music by Axel Dörner (GEMA) & Mark Sanders (PRS)
“Steve Noble[‘s] armoury of textures and tones is an acoustic mirror of [Ikue] Mori’s electronica, and just as spellbinding. He attacks his orthodox, loose-skinned drum kit from all angles, lays upturned gongs on the drumheads and is a master of orthodoxy as well as the avant-garde. His duet with Mori was the evening’s highlight, a pulsating welter of scrapes, thumps and press rolls interrupted by silences made sinister by the tick of an off-kilter metronome.” – Mike Hobart, Financial Times
Ikue Mori electronics
Steve Noble drums, percussion
1. Seismic Waves 6:21
2. Montparnasse Derailment 3:25
3. Combustion 2:54
4. Convection 3:59
5. Atmospheric Pressure 6:23
6. Black Death (Steve’s March) 5:52
7. Land of Famine 11:20
8. Inferno 3:26
Ikue Mori and Steve Noble first played together in 2010 at London's Cafe Oto. It was immediately evident to everyone in the room that something had clicked and a very special combination had emerged.
Apparently operating according to some sort of shared dream logic, Mori and Noble’s music is always unpredictable but never incoherent, switching suddenly between ominous abstract soundscapes and exuberant rhythmic interplay, peppered with strange recurrences, idiomatic fragments and vertiginous changes of perspective, and characterized by a strong sense of forward momentum.
From her beginnings drumming with the seminal no wave unit DNA, Mori has always had a distinctively percussive sensibility, and her deft electronic manipulations merge perfectly with Noble’s fiercely physical handiwork. Drums and their digital double: the similarities and differences overlap and interrupt, crystallize and dissolve, split and converge into a fast-flowing torrent of compelling musical activity.
Recorded on 16 November 2011 at Eastcote Studios, London
Mixed and mastered by Rupert Clervaux at Gray’s Inn Road
Music by Ikue Mori (Tohban Djan Publishing BMI) & Steve Noble (PRS)
Tracks
01_MoriNoble_PredictionWarning_SeismicWaves
02_MoriNoble_PredictionWarning_MontparnasseDerailment
03_MoriNoble_PredictionWarning_Combustion
04_MoriNoble_PredictionWarning_Convection
05_MoriNoble_PredictionWarning_AtmosphericPressure
06_MoriNoble_PredictionWarning_BlackDeath
07_MoriNoble_PredictionWarning_LandOfFamine
08_MoriNoble_PredictionWarning_Inferno
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