Unlockings

Sound excerpt

Unlockings and Lower Marsh can be considered a sort of farewell note to one of London’s most crucial venues for improvised music and sound art after its unexpected closure in late 2023 due to gentrification. “Iklectik was a very attractive venue, acoustically and atmospherically. It was slowly built up by Eduard Solaz and Isa Ferri, who were very sympathetic to work with”, explains Butcher, who has played there many times in the past years. After having mainly invited musicians based in continental Europe for the ausland sets in 2019, Butcher sought to share the stage with UK players for the two-part programme at Iklektic. Originally planning to share the stage with John Edwards in the first part, Butcher had to improvise — luckily, something about which he knows a thing or two — when the double bassist fell ill, and he arranged short duo sets with Pat Thomas on electronics, Mark Sanders on percussion, and Angharad Davies on violin instead.

Butcher had previously collaborated with these three musicians in different contexts, but Unlockings documents a first-of-its-kind quartet line-up. “I wanted a new combination, but made of players I’d worked with over the years”, says Butcher. “Choosing is probably 75 % about the player and 25 % about the instrument — trying to imagine how it might work sonically, but also setting up a situation that is able to surprise everyone, that takes everyone beyond their personal ideas. I’m still always slightly amazed how individual approaches interact and entwine in a collaborative improvisation.” The record’s title pays homage to this, expressing Butcher’s sense that group improvisation can feel like working to reveal things previously hidden or locked away: “We wanted to follow the music’s in-the-moment suggestions and to allow a process of discovery, or uncovering, even unlocking”, he notes.

This process is captured in the recording of a 40-minute-long set that has not been edited for this release but was merely split into four different movements, with the last piece played as an encore. Butcher admits that it felt “a little harder than expected” to make this work. This happened in a productive way, as he is quick to note. “It meant that we had to search to find alternatives to more familiar ways of interacting”, he says. “I find one doesn’t want to “force” too much onto a new combination. You have to allow it to discover its own music.” This is precisely what happens on Unlockings, with each individual musician’s playing being accentuated by the others, who leave each other space in which to unfold. Whether it’s Thomas’s manipulating samples on his iPad, Davies’s adventurous use of her instrument, Sanders’s gentle but firm rhythms, or Butcher’s own playing on soprano and tenor saxophone: these four musicians move as one without ever neglecting the contributions of their peers.

Kristoffer Patrick Cornils

Credits

A1
I 12:16
A2
II 10:20
B1
III 11:50
B2
IV 07:05

John Butcher soprano and tenor saxes
Angharad Davies violin
Mark Sanders percussion
Pat Thomas electronics

Recorded by Dave Hunt on 5 April 2022 at Iklektic, London
Mixed by John Butcher and mastered by Andreas Lupo Lubich
All music by Butcher/Davies/Sanders/Thomas

Thanks to Eduard Solaz and Isa Ferri

Artwork by Yaqin Si
Letterpress by Daniel Klotz