"the pieces move by with quicksilver invention: their individual identities ultimately blur into a work focused, diverse and confusingly singular" Stuart Broomer (Free Jazz Collective)
Iluso Records are delighted to announce the first release of 2020, 'Old Paradise Airs' by the inimitable duo of Steve Beresford and John Butcher.
Steve Beresford and John Butcher are two of the most acclaimed members of the UK's first generation of improvising free jazz & experimental musicians. Beresford and Butcher first played together in 1992 in a small record store in Wandsworth and have since collaborated frequently in various combos.
Remarkably, Old Paradise Airs is the debut duo album by these two masters. Recorded live at London’s Iklektik Art Lab the album features six equally intriguing pieces of spontaneously composed and performed music filled with all the joyous twists, turns and cerebral contemplation one would expect from a meeting of these two veteran performers.
From the spirited opening Krotyl, to the introspectively haunting and enveloping cacophony of Dreen and glitched wheeziness of Marr, Old Paradise Airs is an exquisitely recorded document of improvised music of the highest calibre by two of the world's greatest living exponents.
The album's track titles are aptly taken from Honk, Conk and Squacket, a compilation of Fabulous and Forgotten Sound-Words from a Vanished Age of Listening. Listeners of this album should expect strange and noisy apparitions, bizarre inventions and vivid imaginations of sound.
Steve Beresford has been a central figure in the British and international spontaneous music scenes for over forty years, freely improvising on the piano, electronics and other things with people like Derek Bailey, Evan Parker, Han Bennink, John Zorn and Alterations (with David Toop, Terry Day and Peter Cusack).
John Butcher operates at the cutting edge of improvisatory practice. His work ranges through improvisation, composition, multi-track performance and explorations with feedback, unorthodox acoustics and non-concert location work. Since the early 80s he has collaborated with hundreds of musicians – including Derek Bailey, Rhodri Davies, Andy Moor (EX), Phil Minton, Christian Marclay, Eddie Prevost, John Stevens’ SME, Gino Robair, Polwechsel, Mark Sanders, John Tilbury, and Okkyung Lee.
credits
released February 1, 2020
Steve Beresford - piano, objects, electronics
John Butcher - soprano and tenor saxophones
Recorded live by Giovanni La Rovere.
29 May 2019, at Iklectik, Old Paradise Yard, London.
Mixed & Mastered by John Butcher.
Thanks to Eduard Solaz.
Track titles from ‘Honk, Conk and Squacket’, by I.M. Rawes.
supported by 35 fans who also own “Old Paradise Airs”
Total mastery of patience, time, and drama create a constantly engaging journey that never gets tiresome or same-y: in fact the harder you listen the better it gets! Somehow Sorey et al. find a way to combine the deep listening and spontaneous interaction of the best jazz with the sense of every tone and sound being worth a universe of listening, which could be equally from Cage and Feldman or the accompaniment to an ancient ritual.
The recording/engineering is absolutely perfect as well. Giles
The London nu-jazz group use sophisticated recording techniques and clever arrangements to blur the line between illusion and atmosphere. Bandcamp New & Notable Sep 22, 2021