By: Ross Edwards
Rating: 8/11

Johnny Butler’s solo album is epically slow and intensely beautiful, the soundtrack to a science fiction film that makes the ambient, submerged mood of the music its highest priority. Performed by a lone saxophonist with a loop station, Butler stays out of the way of the sound: on “Cathedral,” lulled reverberations drift in and out of focus, while on “Katrina” Butler swoops over a bouncing, brooding, chorus.

“Cathedral”’s cleansing and distorted tones overlap like the buildup of Steve Reich’s “Music for 18 Musicians,” presenting vague melodies like the rigid spires of a cathedral disappearing and reappearing through rushing water. “Katrina" is a well-presented, concise song, with saxophone functioning as melody and rhythm section.  “Glitch” is indistinguishably live and mechanical. Butler introduces melodies one by one, looping them at different lengths to twist rhythmic feels. He swells these looped interludes to include more and more notes, ranges, timbres, and a melee of stuttering saxes. 

His most effective pieces are the more ambient ones on the album, as they bring to light the perfect saxophone machine-sounds in a dramatic, slow, haunting atmosphere.  “Eulogy” achieves this with a landscape of delay and a feedback-hounded simple, folkloric melody.  Butler sounds like he’s calling out to the dead, or like bagpipes at the procession, marching slowly through a rainy graveyard. The tone is not bleak or hopeless, only tinged with sadness and spiritual solemnity. Johnny Butler’s solo album is an interaction with himself, yet still sounds lonely. The honesty depicted through these live performances is slow, electronic, and the effect is lingering.