FREE JAZZ BLOG - Eyal Hareuveni
Visionary Fantasies
AMM’s percussionist Eddie Prévost and Butcher shared the stage for the first time at Derek Bailey's 1990 London Company Week. They didn't perform together again until March 2005, when they recorded their first duo album, (Interworks). Since then they kept performing together in different formats, recorded collaborations of Butcher with AMM (Trinity and Sounding Music, with an expanded AMM featuring pianist Christian Wolff and cellist Ute Kanngiesser) and later Butcher took part in in Prévost’s series of Meetings with Remarkable Saxophonists (Volume 2, with double bass player Guillaume Viltard).
Visionary Fantasies was recorded in April 2018 at Iklectik, London. The cover frames this duo recording with a fitting aphorism by William Blake’ from “The Argument” (1788): “As the true method of knowledge is experiment, the true faculty of knowing must be the faculty which experiences. This faculty I treat of”. Butcher begins with two solo pieces, the contemplative “Twice and More” that investigates the resonant qualities of the tenor sax and as an abstract wind machine, and “Tree Demons”, where Butcher orchestrates bird calls into a playful, urgent choir. Prévost’s 19-minutes solo “Obsessional Enquiries” begins as a deep meditation on the microtonal and almost infinite resonant characteristics of cymbals and gongs. Later it morphs into powerful waves of intense, metallic sounds, each one explores more and more nuances of these sounds, and then it concludes with a quiet, graceful coda.
Prévost and Butcher three-parts “Visionary Fantasies” suite encompasses many facets of the inventive and imaginative language of these master improvisers. They play and experiment with abstract, constant-shifting dynamics as means to share ideas and doubts, feed each other’s with an invigorating energy, release the torturing tension, suggest a vivid, cinematic drama and offer compassion and tender yet sober comfort. And all performed with rich, beautiful colors and engaging elegance.