Volatile Object is the sophomore album of the high-caliber, free improvising trio Fictional Souvenirs, featuring the idiosyncratic, elusive figures – British Pat Thomas on piano and electronics, John Butcher on soprano and tenor saxes and Norwegian drummer Ståle Liavik Solberg. Like the self-titled debut album of the trio (Astral Spirits/Monofonus Press, 2019) it was recorded live, this time at London’s Café Oto in January 2023,
This trio relies on these improvisers’ extensive experience and deep rapport in playing together in different contexts. Thomas and Butcher played in the Common Objects trio (Skullmarks, Meena, 2018), and recently recorded Fathom (with bassist Dominic Lash and drummer Steve Noble, 577, 2023). Butcher and Lonberg recorded as a duo (So Beautiful, It Starts To Rain, Clean Feed, 2016), and later as a trio (with double bass master Barre Philips and pianist Kaja Draksler, and in the Stray quartet (Into Darkness, with guitarist John Russell and Lash, Iluso, 2017). Butcher hosted Thomas and Solberg in his masterful Fluid Fixations (Weight of Wax, 2024).
The intimate dynamics allow this trio to sketch adventurous and wonderfully unpredictable yet organic textures. The live set moves seamlessly between poetic, pin-drop delicacy, with great focus on detail and deep listening, especially on the first two pieces, «Run of Luck» and «Crimps», where Thomas plays the piano, often as a resonant-percussive instrument, to the completely different, sound-oriented frenzied abstraction, on the last two pieces. In these pieces, the epic, 24-minute «Heat of Absorption» and «Eye Level», Thomas switches to otherworldly electronics. He triggers tense but inventive employment of extended breathing and percussive techniques by Butcher and Solberg. These radical improvisations guarantee no safety net, but pure, daring and blissful art of the moment.
Butcher joins percussionists Luigi Marino (on cymbals, the Persian zarb and feedback devices) and Mark Wastell (who runs the Confront label) for a live set, captured at the international symposium Musicians’ Perspectives on Improvisation at Exploratorium Berlin in February 2024. Butcher, Wastell and Marino first met as a trio in the chapel of St. Margaret House in Bethnal Green, London. Marino and Wastell recorded before with Wastell’s large ensemble The Seen and later as a parallel duo, focusing on the subtle resonances of metal instruments and a shared sense of time.
The trio with Butcher explores how the Butcher’s ethereal sound waves and his extended breathing techniques, with their short and fragmented percussive sounds, correspond and stimulate Marino and Wastell’s resonant surfaces of the percussive instruments, and create atmospheric, constantly shifting and shaping, larger resonant spaces. Such resonant spaces, unusual locations, and unconventional acoustic instrumentations are Butcher’s long-time interest. The four resonant spaces of Parallel Streams, and especially the 29-minute, third one, invite the listeners to immerse themselves in their deep and delicate, mysterious and imaginative resonances.
Eyal Hareuveni
John Butcher (saxophones), Pat Thomas (piano, electronics), Ståle Liavik Solberg (drums), Luigi Marino (cymbals, zarb, zarb-e zurkhaneh, feedback devices), Mark Wastell (percussion)
