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  • in jewel case with 4 pg booklet
    Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

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1.
2.
The Gabdash 02:36
3.
4.
Kickshaws 03:27
5.
6.
7.
Weaves 04:25
8.
9.
Mean Time 03:53
10.
11.
The Clipper 03:56
12.
Coracle 06:33
13.
14.
Inkle 02:34

about

1-10 originally released on Acta LP (1989)
1-14 released on Emanem CD (2005)

John Butcher - tenor & soprano saxophones
Phil Durrant - violin & electronics
Paul Lovens - selected drums, cymbals & saw
Radu Malfatti - trombone, zither & accessories
John Russell - acoustic guitar

"With the hindsight afforded by 17 years, News from the Shed seems astoundingly prescient; if you looked on a map for the place where European free improvisation branched out into more compositionally based strategies, electro-acoustic and lower-case improv, this 1989 session was the crossroads."
Signal to Noise - Bill Meyer (2005)

"PINDROP TIME. The music two minutes into News from the Shed couldn't be quieter. With Russell's unmistakable soundless explosions of fragmentary unvoiced guitar - the quietest element - as inspiration and direction, this quintet never rises to force or volume to make their points. "Everything Stops For Tea" almost isn't there at all.

They’re uncommonly laconic as well: long mastery or else masterly intuition help them never to overburden an idea with its clumsy exposition - a touch, and they're onto something new. They’re control freaks, formally and physically. Endings are so spectral, so minutely signalled, that they're uncanny.

Improvisation in London is fallen on lean times - as lean as any it's known in 25 years. If you wanted to be romantic, you could make a case for the music on this record (and that on Conceits, Acta’s LP Of The Year last year) as a sound-painting of sonic resourcefulness in a thin season. In purely practical terms, equipment's cheaper etc. You find what you want in the Kitchen; you can record it there, too.

But the necessary concentration has uncovered something more than ways of saving money where there isn't any anyway. Microscopic, minimalist, dirty Abstract Expressionism. Or something. Remember that pin? Did you happen to notice the Jackson Pollock painted, on the head of it? The mystically inclined would argue it hardly matters who’s aware of it, as long as it's been done. Maybe so. Personally speaking I think the only satisfactory acknowledgement of something like this is crowds of people pushing each other out of the way to purchase the record. Go for it."

WIRE - Mark Sinker (1989)

credits

released March 18, 2020

Recorded at Wood Wharf Studios, London - 22 Feb 1989 by Marc Hunt.
Covert Art by David Tinn.

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tags

about

John Butcher London, UK

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

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