John Butcher

The brilliant sax player John Butcher continues to expand the boundaries of free improvisation. This is his latest solo release. An inexhaustible outpouring of ideas blends with phantasmagoric, wondrous technique to create a richly colored, dynamic world of sound. Not only is this John Butcher's greatest masterpiece, but as a solo saxophone album it is a valuable document that can even be said to rank alongside Evan Parker's 'Monoceros''. The 3 pieces were performed at Shimanouchi Church in Osaka and at Hall Egg Farm in Fukaya, Saitama, during Butcher's summer 2013 Japan tour.

"Recent years have seen a little flurry of solo releases from London's master saxophonist John Butcher, sometimes resulting from local labels issuing his concert recordings after invitations to play abroad. Nigemizu was captured at two live dates in Japan in 2013.

"Now 61, Butcher has developed a sound that is his own, and while the music here is devoid of much extended technique it is still unmistakably Butcher. Half melodies are explored, pulled apart in real time, blurred with multiphonic rattling, forced through with sudden bursts of volume and scattered all about the place as fragments never to be put back together. The amount of invention, playfulness, searching and passionate endeavour here in these three pieces is remarkable." The Wire