Martin Archer & Walt Shaw - Biyartabiyu (2024)

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Martin Archer & Walt Shaw - Biyartabiyu (2024)

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Long term associates saxophonist Martin Archer and drummer Walt Shaw deliver an engaging and beautifully recorded improvised duo dialogue recorded real time in one session. The music is close to Archer's core influence of jazz in the tradition of Art Ensemble Of Chicago, Anthony Braxton, Leo Smith and other AACM artists.

Archer writes: "Because I make records in a number of different styles, I often filter and change my saxophone playing to match the style of the record I'm making. But when I make a work like this, you hear my playing in my natural, unfiltered style, and that style is determined by the many AACM records which were most influential in forming my own playing. That's especially true in this duo setting with Walt, where the music is stripped down to its essence of blues + abstraction. It's really simple, because I'm not a fancy player. I just play in a way which pleases me and which connects back to the players I really love to hear.

Walt is the ideal partner for this type of duo. Like me, he's developed his own methodology and palette of sounds which is based on a feel for the architecture of the music as opposed to being rocket-fuelled by technical manuals.

On this session I chose to use all five of the members of the saxophone family which I play. The pieces are heard in the order we played them, and because we didn't hang around between takes or do any second takes, you just need the same amount of time to listen to this record as it took us to make it."

Martin Archer: alto, sopranino, tenor, baritone saxophones, saxello
Walt Shaw: drums and percussion