In the late '90s and early 2000s, John Butcher's playing has gradually transformed and turned into one of the most individual voices in free improvisation. His previous solo CD, Fixations (14) (on Emanem, 2001), featured him in acoustic improvisations recorded with traditional means. For Invisible Ear, he focused on closed- mic'ed, amplified/feedback saxophone solos and multi-tracked pieces. Each track is a delight in highly focused improvisation and ingenuity. Despite the abstract nature of the music, he remains surprisingly lyrical. The pieces of closed-mic soprano sax feature him exploring the extremely quiet, where an instrument's shape and size becomes close to irrelevant. One would more likely associate the high-pitched tones and gurgles in Swan Style to analog electronics than to mouth and reed. The amplified and feedback pieces are the most surprising, especially since there was almost no recorded example of this technique in Butcher's discography prior to this album. He plays quiet staccato notes and controls their feedback in the same way an electric guitarist would with backward and volume pedals -- except that no electronics are involved beside the microphone-and-loudspeaker set-up. The sounds he gets in Streamers evoke bowed cymbals. Butcher's first solo album, Thirteen Friendly Numbers (on Acta, 1992), included a number of multi-tracked pieces. The three new ones on this album provide an element of continuity while exploring fresh grounds (like mirroring drones in What Remains). The last piece, Atelier, is a soprano sax "trio" recorded in a resonant room. Gorgeously rich, tonal, and not the least bit microsonic, it creates a striking contrast with what preceded it. Just so we remember that Butcher won't let himself get trapped into a single idiom, be it so-called non-idiomatic improvisation. ~ François Couture, Rovi

1		Swan Style
2		Cup Anatomical
3		What Remains
4		Streamers
5		A Controversial Fix for...
6		...Shrilling Reed Freakout
7		The Importance of Gossip
8		Dark Field
9		Bright Field
10		Magnetic Bottle
11		Sprinkler
12		Atelier

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