Activity Center & Phil Minton

Michael Renkel: acoustic guitar, zither, percussion
Burkhard Beins: percussion, zither
Phil Minton: voice

Vocalist Phil Minton's instinctive ability to pull something new from his throat has to be admired. In the company of guitarist Michael Renkel and percussionist Burkhard Beins (known collectively as Activity Center), Minton finds plenty of material within their music and noisemaking to wrap his vocal cords around, all of which allows his creative persona to fully unfurl as the session progresses. As part of Activity Center he opens up with an astonishing array of guttural squeaks, burps, groans and gasps: what sounds like his very soul is straining to burst free. Accompanied by Renkel's sensitively stroked acoustic guitar and zither and Beins's equally emotive percussion and occasional bowed cymbal, the six pieces here range from the humorous to the grotesque. On the elongated "RubbleRubble", all three musicians fuse together in a constantly shifting surge, punctuated throughout with barks, growls and excited pantings in the dark from Minton's seemingly endless store of vocal distortions. Chased around by Beins and Renkel's fractured instrumentation, the trio rock out to a scattered beat of madness, joy and sheer bedlam.
- Edwin Pouncy, The Wire -

2003 ACTIVITY CENTER & PHIL MINTON (rapidshare/mediafire)

John Butcher & Phil Minton - Apples of Gomorrah

Phil Minton: voice
John Butcher: soprano & tenor saxophones

Review

by François Couture

To state it upfront: Apples of Gomorrah is an excellent album, probably the best one could have hoped for from this duo. But it raises two questions: Why does it take three years to release an album? And why does it need two tape editors other than the artists? Free improv purists will immediately jump on the "record and let it be" case. Tampering with the tapes leads to interrogations regarding the quality of the performance as it happened. On the other hand, the German label Grob has shown in the past its interest in releasing the best album possible, not the most accurate document. In that, Apples of Gomorrah succeeds. Most of this album (the first 12 tracks) was recorded at Gateway Studios in August 1999. To push the set to 45 minutes, one track from a concert at the LMC (recorded in July) and four more from the Red Rose (February) were added. In all tracks, vocals and saxophone dance with each other; sometimes they waltz, sometimes they trash, elsewhere they achieve a Butoh-like purity in stillness ("Wormleaf," powerfully dense in its lack of movement). Phil Minton is as playful as ever, which means he never crosses over to childish play-acting, even though his musical vocabulary would make it easy to do so. No matter how many times you hear Minton sing, the sounds he makes remain amazing and fresh. His sense of improvisation matches John Butcher's ability to keep proceedings on the cutting edge. The main quality of this album resides in the brevity of the tracks. Most last between two and three minutes, enhancing the density of the playing.

2002 APPLES OF GOMORRAH

Daunik Lazro & Phil Minton - Alive at Sonorités

Daunik Lazro: baritone saxophone
Phil Minton: voice

The sheer humanity of his vocalising comes across most effectively when there are no other instruments around, and even when the sounds produced are trans-human. Then the set with saxophonist Daunik Lazro appeared, an astonishing coordination of two very different but similarly conceived voices, Lazro's baritone horn capable of everything from emphysemic whispers to huge, heavily tongued blarts to singing passages that sit perfectly with Minton's occasional forays into abstract bel canto. Minton's is the nimbler voice, inevitably, and often some of the time Lazro muses behind him in short bursts of cello tone rather than engaging him directly. But the parallelism works and, while there's nothing on the set to match the sheer astonishment of the "Breath Out" sequence on No Doughnuts, the 50 minute Montpellier set is deeply involving and ultimately just as satisfying.
Brian Morton - The Wire

2007 ALIVE AT SONORITES

4 Walls - And the world aint square

Luc Ex: acoustic bass
Phil Minton: voice
Michael Vatcher: drums
Veryan Weston: piano.

1. The anarchist's anthem (poem by John Henry Mackay) (04.05)
2. Pliers (04.36)
3. Hinged (01.27)
4. Advertising salesman (Adrian Mitchell) (02.05)
5. Bits of five (03.25)
6. Fine weather (Ho Chi Mihn) (03.42)
7. Night in Siberia (02.17)
8. Rain or hail & Sluggo (poem by e.e.cummings/Sluggo by Michael Moore) (04.17)
9. Grisly (02.32)
10. Girder (02.05)

Recorded in September 2000 at the Bimhuis, Amsterdam and January 2001 at E-sound Studio, Weesp.

Front cover artwork by Isabelle Vigier.

2001 And the world aint square

Review