"Away, I was" is a collection of solo pieces created in, and for, some quite different situations. The two longest pieces are tenor and soprano improvisations recorded in concert at Dragon Club, Poznan (2024) and the famous Blow Out series, Oslo (2025). The shorter tracks range through saxophone-controlled feedback and multitracked works, a tenor sax version of Chris Burn's transcription of a Derek Bailey solo, studio improvisations and compositions and an audience recording of Butcher's opening amplified soprano burst at a Keiji Haino "Fushitsusha" concert.  Over 40 years of sustained performance and publishing, English saxophonist, improvisor and composer John Butcher has shaped much of what the soprano and tenor saxophone can do, and what their roles and vocabulary in improvised music might be. There’s a situated purposefulness to Butcher’s music. It is always concerned with its context, flexibility, space and company: how group playing works and flows; how aspects of improvisation fit into a living musical world; how and what the saxophone can be for.I’ve always heard Butcher’s playing as a kind of nose to tail saxophony, where the whole instrument from reed-tip to brim of bell is available, accessible and articulate. Few other saxophonists slice as sharply back into the physical history, material (and physics) of the instrument, across its near 200 year history through jazz, particularly Lester Young’s infinite permutations, to its speculative, hybrid origins. When Hector Berlioz wrote of his friend Adolphe Sax’s then fresh invention, “the varied beauty of its accent, sometimes serious, sometimes calm, sometimes impassioned, dreamy or melancholic”, he could have been imagining Butcher's distinctively clean but complex, enquiring soundworld.WIRE Primer by Seymour Wright

Francesca Ogbuachi is a Photographer, Writer, Storyteller and music maker from time to time, although she is unable to read music notes. She is Italian, born to Nigerian parents, and her way of speaking and saying things that she usually wouldn't be able to say is predominantly through Photography, Writing, Videography and playing the piano, which has been a very significant part of, not only her way of working ever since it came back in the picture, but especially of her life. Francesca’s work is all analogue choosing film over digital often using Super 8 for her film work and preferring hours on the dark room over sitting at s computer. One of her inspirations, if not my main one, is everyday people and their way of being unpredictable, which is the whole premise of my writing, and something that is also translating in what she plays, which still baffles her.

Recorded at night by candlelight in the Temple of La Tour-de-Peilz, Switzerland, Music for Intersecting Planes captures the immediacy of sound in space. Cellist Leila Bordreuil and organist Kali Malone join in a work of austere, ritualistic presence, where the granularity of air, the vibration of strings, feedback, and subdued sine waves intersect in sculptural form.Minimal in means yet expansive in effect, the music slowly unfolds like beads on a thread, punctuated by silence and deep breaths. Bellows whistle within feathered string harmonics, interference patterns pulsate throughout the chapel, and the environment itself becomes part of the composition, with ringing church bells and motorcycles passing in the distance.Performed live in single takes, the music balances patience and intensity, composure and chance. The collaboration reveals new terrain: more tonal and composed than Bordreuil’s work, more textural and raw than Malone’s.Music for Intersecting Planes is both severe and tender, an elemental convergence of cello and organ that resonates with the timeless intrigue of acoustic phenomena.Released by Ideologic Organ in collaboration with La Becque Editions.

حمد] Ahmed] - Writing gathers together the [Ahmed] ‘paper’ texts from the last decade: liner-notes; covers of the releases; and writing by the band members – Antonin and Joel have written two fresh ones for this book, Seymour’s have appeared alongside the records, and some of Pat’s come from a time (long) before [Ahmed]. “Together, the ideas-energy in these things gives a sense of what we have done, do, think together (and apart) in living music, how our different ways come together, and how, together, we learn through be-doing [Ahmed]... These texts are woven together (the etymology of text is from weave) through (and into) a rich fabric of enquiry. A collaborative weaving together of difference(s) to make a whole (thing).” (Seymour Wright) Contributions by Pat Thomas, Seymour Wright, Antonin Gerbal, Joel Grip, Robert Levin, James G. Spady, John Chantler, Edward George, Fred Moten. Designed by Will Holder. Thanks to Jef Lambrechts and Stoffel Debuysere. Published by In vitro and KASK School of Arts, April 2026.

A masterfully expressive solo Oud set from improviser and composer, Kareem Samara, recorded at Cafe OTO in February 2026 as part of a bill with Abdullah Miniawy Trio. Starting with a deceptively stark cluster of notes, Samara lays out his palette before leading us on. Gentle, probing motifs are intertwined with lyrical flourishes, conjuring a quiet, irresistible momentum. He weaves these threads together in an intricate, spiralling pattern whose lines seem to shift and recombine with every subsequent listen. There is a generosity to Samara's approach; nothing is hidden or overly adorned. He moves unhurriedly from one facet of the Oud to the next, presenting each in turn with a transparency that cannot help but draw you in. But, like a clear body of water, it takes a little while to adjust to this clarity before you can perceive the layers of depth below. When you do, you realise that there's a whole other world here, stretching out beneath the surface. Two thirds of the way into the set, the expanse of this world stretches out further still, with a sudden trilling of high-pitched notes, sounding like nothing so much as a flock of Blaise Bontems' singing-bird automata. But in this "birdsong" we can also hear echoes of the Oud and its amplification, both; its sound expanded and refracted into something new. So deftly does Samara incorporate the technological augmentation of the instrument that it's almost a shock when the unprocessed Oud is reintroduced. But it is immediately apparent that this is a dialogue not only between the instrument and itself, but with past and present also. In such a way Samara honours the traditions of the instrument whilst also giving us a brief glimpse of the future. -- Recorded by Billy SteigerMixed and mastered by Oli Barrett

LP is out-of-printCD includes two short duo sets originally available as digital-only bonus tracks. Download available as 320k MP3 or 24bit FLAC. This recording gathers all of the music from the final night of Otomo and Sachiko's first residency in 2009 which saw the pair joined by the long running trio of Evan Parker, John Edwards and Tony Marsh and special guest John Butcher. Butcher played duos with both Otomo and Sachiko and joined the quintet for a rousing sextet: stunning twin saxophone interplay, the unparalleled open-ness of the Marsh/Edwards rhythm pairing, Sachiko's deft high frequency interventions and Otomo's guitar at the centre - moving between abrasive textural invention and suggestive single note runs of ever-shifting melody. REVIEWS "As for indicating a place in the curiously sculpted bridges between improvised music and sound art, well, the simple singularity of these daring and committed performances should bear out their significance." Clifford Allen, Tiny Mix Tapes "This Quintet/Sextet album is recorded beautifully and it needed to be to capture all the nuance involved ... These are musicians at the top of their craft." Free Jazz Blog "...fresh and inspired. The recording stands as a finely-honed classic of classically approached free improvisation: the players dance and flow smoothly and effortlessly with and around the sounds of their partners." - Henry Kuntz Point of Departure Review