John Butcher/Phil Durrant/Mark Wastell

Veteran UK free improvisers assemble for a couple of live sessions to demonstrate their idea font and ambidextrous skills. While John Butcher sticks to his usual tenor and soprano saxophones, Phil Durrant who often works with modular synthesizers and violin here plays electric mandolin and electronics, while Mark Wastell, previously a cellist, has concentrated on percussion for the past two decades. All have improv experience in configurations involving everyone from John Russel to Burkhard Beins.

Eschewing hierarchies by apportioning each player’s contributions, they work to expose timbres without aiming for climaxes or unneeded textures. That doesn’t mean there isn’t quiet drama in the interactions. But it’s move like experiencing a developing indie film rather than  the CGI and technicolor expansions of an in-your-face blockbuster

Careful positioning Butcher’s distinctive slurs and circular trills with precision drum pumps, cymbal clanks, string frails and oscillated electronic squeezes sets up the affiliated “Around I” and “Around II”. This equivalency is maintained throughout as widened group projections combine into an emphasized drone, then splinter exposing singular string clips, distant percussion rattles and reed squeaks. Circling one another the textures become more regularized, adding more voltage oscillations to set up the four-part “Above “ suite recorded three days later.

More upfront, the suite initially weaves corkscrew reed vibrations, chiming mandolin string chording and rattling drum pops to an introduction the swerves from the escalating mélange of stops and chiming to introduce an unexpected horn duet between tenor saxophone lowing and slide-whistle-like pitches from Wastell’s percussion additions. These peeping refractions eventually lead to the extended “Above III”, which finds the trio members reaching an apogee of rediscovering and melding the first sequence’s initial timbres. Butcher pushes corkscrew reed twitters to their highest pitches that cleaves onto constant rubber-band-like twangs from the mandolin and unvarying percussion pats for a climatic lift. Descending to metallic strums, an unbroken horizontal reed trill and simple cymbal clanks the three then confirm how creative music can evolve in the most understated manner.

The final sequence subsequently draws together dissected and dissonant timbers into a thematic linkage of mandolin strums and stops, twisted and circular reed tones and what sounds like measured strokes on a hanging metal sheet before fading away.

If there’s such a designation of traditional Free Music than Butcher, Durrant and Wastell have created an example of it. The shock of the new may be missing, but not the substance of serious creativity.

–Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Around I 2. Around II 3. Above I 4. Above II 5. Above III 6. Above IV

Personnel: John Butcher (tenor and soprano saxophones); Phil Durrant (electric mandolin and electronics) and Mark Wastell (drums and percussion)