Akio Suzuki, John Butcher

Sound artist Akio Suzuki crisscrosses the world with his self-made instruments. British tenor/soprano sax player John Butcher is a leading figure in improvised music. These two musicians have been carrying out duo performances since 2002. The six tracks on this CD are recordings of their duos in Scotland in 2006 and Tokyo in 2015. In June 2006, an event was held in which Suzuki and Butcher visited and performed in places around Scotland that have highly distinctive acoustic characteristics. Butcher's solo performances from this event were released in the CD Resonant Spaces (Confront, 2008). Recordings had also been made of the duo performances, and these are being released for the first time on this CD. The fascinating performances on these five tracks, each of which is 5-8 minutes long, made use of the special acoustic environments of five locations: the underground Wormit Reservoir in Fife; the Hamilton Mausoleum in Hamilton, well known as a manmade structure with long reverberation; the gigantic Smoo Cave in Durness; the large Tugnet Ice House in Spey Bay; and the Lyness Oil Tank in the Orkney Islands, which was used during World War Two. Suzuki and Butcher also performed together nine and a half years later, in November 2015, at Ftarri Festival2015, held at SuperDeluxe, Tokyo. In this 27-minute-long performance, they exchange myriad sounds in a flexible, spontaneous manner.