It is gratifying to welcome the return of an Emanem classic. This trio of John Butcher on soprano and tenor saxophones, Phil Durrant on violin, and John Russel on guitar, represents the best of what British improvised music has to offer, and these 1998 recordings present that group in superb detail.
The first four tracks present a large slice of the trio's appearance at the Musique Action '98 festival, and they are caught in excellent stereo, no mean feat in such a reverberant acoustic. Revel in the saxophone and violin interplay as "Buffet Balls" bounces into existence, replaced within moments by some guitar and violin chamber music in microtones. The track is an exquisite set of duos and solos, John Butcher diving headlong into some late Trane rapid-fire scalar territory in the middle, a trope I've not heard him explore in some time. Then, there are Durrant's silvery harmonics off to the left of the stereo spectrum, complemented by some lower-register murmurings from Russell, bringing the extraordinary study in contrast to a close.
The album's final piece, "Climate Change," a Red Rose gig preceded by what Martin Davidson's notes call a highly strung atmosphere, is actually an exercise in reflection. Here, the trio breathes as a unit, delving into the depths of flavored silence and pointillist interplay, but merging them, transitioning from one to another with incredible ease. I'm reminded of Jack Kerouac's description of Lee Konitz playing a tune as if it were the room he lived in. There are times when Butcher and Durrant sound as if they are playing one instrument, or that Russell and Durrant are both percussionists, so varied are these three musicians' approaches to timbre and so free are their rhythmic conceptions. The slow ascending and descending dynamic arcs are a thing to behold as the group travels territory between near-silence and the wild abandon ten minutes from the Mopomoso performance's conclusion.
The disc ends with Durrant and Russell in some more of that rhythmic interplay, peppered with high-register punctuation from Butcher, the interaction that makes any combination of players from this group so special. Seventeen years later, the disc remains a benchmark and a powerful statement of intent.
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