The new trio of John Butcher, Werner Dafeldecker, and Roy Carroll unites three singular voices. Butcher and Dafeldecker previously collaborated in Polwechsel, a group that redefined the boundaries between composition and improvisation through radical reduction and sonic precision. Carroll and Dafeldecker’s work as Paroxysm delved into dense, timbre-focused explorations and psychoacoustic interplay. In this new formation, the trio combines forensic attention to sound with visceral intensity—fracturing time, form, and material. Their music unfolds as a tapestry of glistening details, unstable structures, and shifting acoustic perspectives.

Born in Brighton and living in London, John Butcher is a saxophonist whose work ranges through improvisation, his own compositions, multitracked pieces and explorations with feedback, unusual acoustics and non-concert locations. He is well known as a solo performer who attempts to engage with a sense of place. Resonant Spaces, for example, is a collection of performances recorded during a tour of unusual locations in Scotland and the Orkney Islands. 

Werner Dafeldecker was born in Vienna in 1964 and studied the double bass which he plays with passion. As a musician, composer and sound artist he takes advantage of the manifold possibilities offered by electro-acoustics. His musical projects are often inspired and deduced by outside influences such as architecture, science, photography and film - partially resulting in the creation of graphical scores for various ensembles and instrumental performers.

Roy Carroll is a musician / composer working with electroacoustic media, which is broadly a set of materials and processes that includes amplification, transducers, synthesis, feedback, audio recordings, software, - auditory and psychoacoustic phenomena even. Feedback, the horror of an instrument hearing itself, is a recurring component of Carroll's work, creating multi-layered forms that continually renegotiate the transformation of electrical audio signals into disturbed air. Roy is based in Berlin.

Photo credit for John Butcher: Sean Kelly

Links:

Paroxysm at Labor Sonor: (band with Dafeldecker and Carroll): https://vimeo.com/493557460

Paroxysm album bandcamp: https://wernerdafeldecker.bandcamp.com/album/paroxysm

Polwechsel website (band with Butcher and Dafeldecker): https://www.polwechsel.com

John Butcher website: https://johnbutcher.org.uk/

Werner Dafeldecker website: http://www.dafeldecker.net/

Roy Carroll website: https://roycarroll.com/

Review quotes: 
Paroxysm

Dafeldecker and Carroll
“a strange form of vapour which is capable of solidifying in the air as we watch. Phenomenal.”
Ed Pinsent, thesoundprojector.com

“The first piece “Tendencies” sketches a minimalist, cold and barren drone, while the second one 
“Basalt” begins with a darker, more sparse and melancholic tone but slowly aims towards a distant, 
almost industrial percussive coda, but like the first piece has its own accumulative, arresting effect.”
Eyal Hareuveni, freejazzblog.org

“It comes by stealth but hits by force. Boom. Never underestimate the subtle, slow build.”
Christopher Noosnibor, auralaggravation.com

Polwechsel 
(Butcher and Dafeldecker (and others))

“The four tracks on this CD all inhabit a very narrow dynamic range, pieces develop gradually 
through accumulation rather than contrast. They reward intense listening, especially on 
headphones, which reveals the music's subtle details.”

Bill Meyer

“it´s a credit to the group´s aesthetic rigour that performers as distinctive as Butcher, Beins and 
Brandlmayr have integrated so seamlessly into the Polwechsel sound. Listen carefully and you can 
pick out Butcher´s meticulous multiphonics, Beins´s trademark stone/polystyrene friction and 
Brandlmayr´s ever daft cymbal work, but Archives Of The North is, and will remain, a music that is 
far more than the sum of its parts.”

Dan Warburton, The Wire