Fluid Fixations, by John Butcher + 13

Fluid Fixations

by John Butcher + 13

supported by

MIKE ANDERSON A complete and satisfying musical experience which, though very accessible will take an age to sink in..It's one of those pieces you can get lost in and keep coming back for more.

Recorded in Huddersfield, a mill town I lived in back in the 60's.The days of the legend Frank Worthington,the high rise of the Lonsbrough and Ibbotson flats,Harold Wilson! Yet so much more to the place than that as this terrific album gives testimony to.There will always be something fresh in the air of that valley !

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Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album
Composed for 14 improvisers. Commissioned by hcmf.
Live recording released on Weight of Wax.

Includes unlimited streaming of Fluid Fixations via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

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Streaming + Download

Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

Purchasable with gift card

£7 GBP or more
Full Digital Discography

65

releases

Get all 65 John Butcher releases available on Bandcamp and save 50%.

Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of Hear and How, Fluid Fixations, Angles of Enquiry, The Very Fabric, But everything now left before it arrived, Plume, Experiments with a Leaf, Drunk on Dreams, and 57 more. , and , .

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	1.	Slipstream 06:01
	2.	Ice Needles 06:24
	3.	Florid 07:38
	4.	Oyashio 13:14
	5.	Cracked Mercury 05:28
	6.	At Risk of Enchantment 03:24
	7.	Metastable Bloom 12:19
	8.	Ersa 09:55

about

JOHN BUTCHER + 13

dieb13 ~ turntables
Liz Allbee ~ trumpet
Sophie Agnel ~ piano
Hannah Marshall ~ cello
Angharad Davies ~ violin
Pat Thomas ~ electronics
Mark Sanders ~ percussion
John Edwards ~ double bass
Ståle Liavik Solberg ~ drums
Matthias Müller ~ trombone
Isabelle Duthois ~ voice, clarinet
Pascal Niggenkemper ~ double bass
Aleksander Kolkowski ~ stroh viola, musical saw
John Butcher ~ saxophones, recordings, composition

Robin Smith (hcmf// 2021 preview)
Where ‘fixed’ and ‘fluid’ might seem to present a conflict of interests, Butcher’s new piece presents them in a kind of harmony. His score positions these two musical qualities on a spectrum, making use of both. “This is a delicate thing”, he says, “If you pin things down too much you can kill them. I want to give instructions that run from the very precise to the almost intangible, in a way that allows the musicians to mould their playing into the piece”.
There’s a lot of subtext to Fluid Fixations – Butcher is writing for thirteen other musicians, all of whom he has collaborated with throughout his career – mutuals who meet in a relentlessly overlapping Venn diagram of the experimental music underground. “Ultimately, I’m the common denominator: the people within the group haven’t all played with each other, and there are some who won’t even have met before”.

John Butcher (2024)
Fluid Fixations places 14 highly individual players into a framework built from instructions that direct ever-shifting groupings, materials and relationships. Overall, the piece was informed by what I think of as psychological orchestration – imagining how specific people might respond to particular ideas, and to the sonic company they find themselves a part of.
In places the sound world incorporates saxophone recordings cut earlier to vinyl by dieb13. His improvising with them – for example; the mouth sounds in pt 2 (with Isabelle Duthois’ voice) and the feedback-saxophone in pt 6 (with Aleks Kolkowski’s musical saw) – tangibly changing the fixed into the flowing.
Some sections use photographic imagery, mostly drawn from nature, to suggest spaces where the musicians can step away from the score to create their own worlds. Specified solos, duos and small groupings were woven into the piece, but my aim for much of the time was to engage the entire ensemble in a multifaceted group music. One whose internal workings both reflect and refract these musicians’ very unique energies.

credits

released February 1, 2024

Weight of Wax - WoW 06

Fluid Fixations was commissioned by hcmf//.
Recorded by Dave Hunt, 21 November 2021.
St. Paul’s, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, UK.
Cover image by Anonymous (1920-40) – Rijksmuseum collection.
Concert photograph by Francis Comyn.
Many thanks to Graham McKenzie, Róisín Hughes, Robin Smith,
Adam Long & Dave Hunt.

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about

John Butcher London, UK

Improviser, Composer, Saxophonist.
Born in Brighton.
Lives in London.

johnbutcher.org.uk

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